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CTQEXRIGHT DEPOSir. 



STEWART KIDD 

DRAMATIC PUBLICATIONS 



The Truth About the Theater Anonymous $1.25 

European Theories of the Drama Barrett H. Clark 5.00 

ContemporaryFrenchDramatists Barrett H.Clark 2.50 

Four E*lays of the Free Theater . . Barrett H.Clark 2.50 
The Provincetown Plays 

Geo. Cram Cook & Frank Shay, Editors 2.50 

The Two Cromwells Liddell DeLesseline 1.50 

Plays and Players Walter Prichard Eaton 3.00 

The Antigone of Sophocles 

Prof. Jos. Edward Harry 1.25 

The Changing Drama Archibald Henderson 2.50 

European Dramatists Archibald Henderson 3.00 

George Bernard Shaw: His Life and Works 

Archibald Henderson 7.50 
Fifty Contemporary One Act Plays 

Compiled by Pierre Loving &f Frank Shay 5.00 

Short Plays Mary MacMillan 2.50 

More Short Plays Mary MacMillan 2.50 

The Gift Margaret Douglas Rogers 1.00 

Comedies of Words and Other Plays 

Arthur Schnitzler, Translated by Pierre Loving 2.50 

Lucky Pehr August Strindberg 2.50 

Translated by Velma Swanston Howard 

Easter August Strindberg 2.50 

Translated by Velma Swanston Howard 

The Hamlet Problem and its Solution 

Emerson Venable 1.50 

Portmanteau Plays Stuart Walker, net 2.50 

More Portmanteau Plays .... Stuart Walker, net 2.50 

Portmanteau Adaptations. . . .Stuart Walker, net 2.50 

Stewart Kidd Modern Plays 

Mansions Hildegarde Planner .50 

The Shepherd in the Distance. .Holland Hudson .50 

Hearts to Mend H. A. Over street .50 

Sham Frank G. Tompkins .50 

Six Who Pass While the Lentils Boil 

Stuart Walker .50 

Others to Follow 



THE 

British and American 
drama of to-day 

OUTLINES FOR THEIR STUDY 

Suggestions, Questions, Biographies and Bibliographies 

for use in connection with the study of 

the more important plays 

By 
BARRETT H. CLARK 

Author of "European Theories of the Drama," 

" Contemporary French Dramatists, *' 

"Four Plays of the Free Theater, ' ' etc. 



im^l: 




CINCINNATI 

STEWART & KIDD COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 



CovTriKht. 1916, by Henir Halt & Co 






COPYRIGHT, 1921 

STEWART & KIDD COMPANY 



All rights reserved 

COPYRIGHT IN ENGLAND 



m 10 1321 



S)CU608633 



To 

BRANDER MATTHEWS 

This Book Is 

Gratefully Dedicated 



PREFACE TO NEW EDITION OF' 

BRITISH AND AMERICAN DRAMA 
OF TODAY 

THIS book was written for one purpose, and one 
alone. A friend of mine surprised me by 
reading it from page three to the end, and 
remarked that he thought it rather poor: it was 
not complete, he claimed, it contained questions 
that remained unanswered, and finally, it was de- 
cidedly obvious. My friend was a critic and his 
knowledge of the modern theater was fairly extensive. 
My author's pride was hurt and I stiffly asked 
him whether he had read the preface. He had not. 
Had he read the Preface to "The Continental Drama 
of Today," the earlier companion volume? He had 
not read that, either. I referred him to the opening 
lines: "A growing demand on the part of clubs, read- 
ing circles, schools, colleges and universities for 
definite and systematic guidance in the study of the 
modern movement in drama has led me to compile 
this Outline," etc. The second volume was merely 
an extension of the first, based upon the same pre- 
mises and written for the same purpose. 

My friend read the preface and admitted that he 
was in the wrong. These books are not for special- 
ists, and they are not for dramatists. They are 
simply aids, and it is hoped, stimulants for lay stu- 
dents of the theater and the printed play. 

It was my purpose to provide outlines for the 
study of a number of more or less representative 



VI PREFACE TO NEW EDITION 

modern dramatists. I have asked questions in order 
to stimulate thought and discussion. I have often 
been requested to answer these questions. Many 
of them I cannot answer; if I could, I should have 
written another book, for a correct answer would 
solve certain problems that most critics ought to be, 
but are far from, clear about. 

The demand for these books appears to persist, 
otherwise there would be no necessity for this new 
preface. But I welcome the chance to add a word to 
my critical utterances of over five years ago: 

There is much in this book that I would change 
if it were not that any attempt at modification would 
destroy the unity and (with such value as it has) the 
scheme of study for the pursuit of which the book 
was first designed. However, I must ask the reader 
to remember that he must not take too seriously my 
dogmatic assertions. Perhaps I ought not to admit 
it, but today I am not quite so sure about many of 
the dramatic canons I so freely enunciated a few 
years ago as a good pedagogue ought to be. I trust 
I have safely passed through the period of peda- 
goguery, though I am still irritated by receiving 
letters addressed to me as "Professor." I will admit 
that I believe dramatic technique to be neither so 
mechanical a matter as I claimed it was, nor the Rules 
of the Drama so rigid as I would have my readers 
think — five years ago. And finally (with my publish- 
er's permission) I greatly fear that I am neither so 
infallible nor so eminent an authority on the drama 
as I (thought I) was when I wrote the book, 

February i, 1921 B. H. C. 



PREFACE 

" The British and American Drama of To-day " 
aims to complete the series of suggestive study 
outlines of representative modern plays begun in 
" The Continental Drama of To-day." The same 
general form and method have been followed as 
were employed in the first volume, with the ex- 
ception of two or three slight modifications. 
First, owing either to the persistent refusal of 
certain dramatists to publish their plays, because 
of practical considerations or because they have 
no wish to make known their works through the 
medium of the printed page, dramatists like Eu- 
gene Walter, David Belasco, and George M. 
Cohan are but briefly referred to. In rarer in- 
stances, that of Sir James Barrie for example, the 
best and most typical plays are either not printed 
or, if such was the case, in editions de luxe, the 
price of which is prohibitive. 

The selection of plays has been a rather diffi- 
cult task. It has, of course, been impossible to 
consider all plays of importance or to include the 
best of each dramatist. Some authors have not 
even been touched upon. Israel Zangwill, Rudolf 
Besier, Charles Rann Kennedy, Alfred Sutro, and 



vm PREFACE 

Somerset Maugham are not truly representative: 
the first three are rather exceptional than typical, 
the last two are typical, but their work is already 
represented by that of such men as Pinero, Jones, 
and Davies. It has been my aim only to include 
typical plays of typical dramatists, thereby afford- 
ing the student a general view of the dramatic 
movement in English-speaking countries since its 
inception something over a quarter of a century 
ago. 

The recent dramatic movement in Ireland has 
very little to do with that in England, but my in- 
clusion of outlines on Irish plays under the gen- 
eral title of " British " may be excused as a mat- 
ter of expediency and geography, " British " 
being understood to embrace the British Isles. 

The mention of first American performances of 
English plays is, I hope, an aid, but I am fully 
aware of the deficiency in this branch of my work. 
There are no complete and authentic records con- 
taining the necessary information. 

It would be impossible to express here my 
thanks to all those who have helped me in the 
compilation of this volume. I may, however, men- 
tion that among the authors who have tendered 
personal aid are: Mr. Bernard Shaw, Mr. William 
Butler Yeats, Lady Gregory, Mr. St. John G. 
Ervine, Mr. Henry Arthur Jones, Mr. George 
Moore, Mr. Granville Barker, Mr. John Gals- 



PREFACE IX 

worthy, and Mr. George Middleton. To Mr. T. C. 
Murray, Mr. Hubert Henry Davies, Miss Githa 
Sowerby, Miss Elizabeth Baker, Mr. Stephen Phil-: 
lips, and Mr. J. O. Francis, I am indebted for 
courteous co-operation by letter. Mr. William 
Archer, Mr. J. T. Grein, and Mr. Clayton Hamil- 
ton have also given valuable advice. Mr. Mont- 
rose J. Moses and Mr. T. R. Edwards have been 
unsparing in their efforts to make the bibliog- 
raphies as complete and free from error as 

possible. 

B. H. C. 



CONTENTS 



THE ENGLISH DRAMA 



Arthur Pinero .... 
Sweet Lavender 
The Second Mrs. Tanqueray . 
Iris ..... 

Mid-Channel .... 
Henry Arthur Jones 
The Silver King 
Michael and His Lost Angel . 
The Liars .... 
Oscar Wilde . . . . 
Salom6 ..... 
Lady Windermere's Fan 
--The Importance of Being Earnest 
^ Bernard Shaw .... 
Candida ..... 
Man and Superman 
Getting Married 

The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet 
Granville Barker 

The Voysey Inheritance . 
Stephen Phillips 
t Paolo and Francesca 
L'St. John Hankin 
A^ The Cassilis Engagement 
I C. Haddon Chambers 
I, The Tyranny of Tears . 
^Hubert Henry Davies 

The Mollusc .... 
John Galsworthy 

Strife 

The Pigeon .... 



page 

3 

10 

14 

19 

24 

29 

36 

40 

44 

47 

51 

55 

59 

63 

71 

76 

81 

86 

90 

93 

97 

99 

107 

110 

114 

116 

121 

124 

128 

131 

135 



XII 



CONTENTS 



John Masefielo 

The Tragedy of Nan 
Stanley Houghton . 

Hindle Wakes 

GiTHA SOWERBY . 

Rutherford and Son 
Elizabeth Bakeb 

Chains 
James Barbie 

Pantaloon 

The Twelve-pound Look 
John Oswald Fbancis 

Change . 



PAGE 

140 
143 
147 
149 
154 
156 
160 
162 
165 
168 
170 
173 
175 



THE IRISH DRAMA 



William Butler Yeats 
The Countess Cathleen . 

John Millington Synge . 
— Riders to the Sea . 

The Playboy of the Western 

Augusta Gregory 
Hyacinth Halvey 
The Rising of the Moon . 

T. C. Murray . 
Birthright 

St. John G. Ervine . 
Mixed Marriage 









181 








185 








188 








191 


1 World 






194 
198 
202 
206 
308 
310 
213 
215 



THE AMERICAN DRAMA 

Bronson Howard ...... 219 

Young Mrs. Winthrop ...... 223 

James A. Herne •••.... 228 

Shore Acres ........ 231 

Augustus Thomas ....... 93S 

The Witching Hour 237 



CONTENTS xiii 

PAGE 

William Gillette ....... 243 

Held by the Enemy 245 

Clyde Fitch ........ 248 

The Truth 253 

William Vaughn Moody ...... 258 

The Great Divide 260 

Percy Mackaye ....... 263 

The Scarecrow ....... 266 

Edward Sheldok ....... 269 

Romance 271 

Eugene Walter ....... 276 

The Easiest Way 278 

Notes ......... 281 

George Middleton 281 

Josephine Preston Peabody .... 283 

Olive Tilford Dargan 284 

Harry Benrimo and George C. Hazelton . . 284 

Percy Mackaye ....... 284 

David Belasco 285 

George Ade ....... 286 

George M. Cohan . . . . . .287 

George H. Broadhurst • . . .288 

William C. De Mille . . . . . .288 

Joseph Medill Patterson ..... 289 

Langdon Mitchell 289 

Charles Klein .289 

Rachel Crothers 290 

Bibliography ........ 293 

Index 303 



THE ENGLISH DRAMA 



ARTHUR PINERO 

Arthur Wing Pinero — since 1909, Sir Arthur 
Pinero — was born in London in 1855. Like many 
another dramatist, he was forced to study law. 
Pinero's father, himself a lawyer, put his young son 
into his office, where the youth, much against his will, 
remained until the age of nineteen. In 1874, he was 
engaged by Mr. and Mrs. Wyndham, and acted small 
parts for a year in Edinburgh. After a year's acting 
the theater burned down, but he secured employment 
in Liverpool, and in 1876 came to London, acting at 
the Globe Theater. Not long after, he entered 
Irving's company and remained at the Lyceum for 
five years. During this time the young actor, not a 
very good one from all accounts, was writing plays, 
and in 1877 his first, " £200 a Year," was produced 
at the Globe. " Daisy's Escape" and " Bygones " 
were soon after performed at the Lyceum. It was 
probably the success of " Daisy's Escape," together 
with the assurance that he would never make a great 
actor, which led Pinero to abandon the stage. His 
earlier efforts are practically negligible; they are 
imitative, stiff, and conventional. " The Money- 
Spinner " is sometimes regarded as indicative of the 
dramatist's later skill, but not until the production 
of "The Squire" (1881) did some promise of better 
things emerge. The following year, William Archer 

3 



4 ARTHUR PINERO 

spoke of the author as " a thoughtful and conscien- 
tious writer with artistic aims, if not yet with full 
command of his artistic means." With " The Magis- 
trate," " The Schoolmistress," and " Dandy Dick " 
— all farces — Pinero attracted considerable attention, 
while "Sweet Lavender" (1888), with its sentiment 
and tears, brought him fame. Beginning with " The 
Profligate" (1889), Pinero opened a period of great 
fecundity: farces, dramas, and comedies succeeded 
one another for many years, and established stand- 
ards which were to obtain for over a decade. " The 
Second Mrs. Tanqueray " (1893) was rightly con- 
sidered the finest English play of the time. Of late, 
Sir Arthur has turned to the depiction of sections of 
middle-class life (in " The Thunderbolt " especially) ; 
this play, together with " Mid-Channel " (1909), has 
met with little success, though the later manner of 
the dramatist is undoubtedly more mature, more skil- 
ful and artistic than that even of " Mrs. Tanqueray " 
and " Iris." Still more recently have come genre 
pictures like " The ' Mind-the-Paint ' Girl " and 
" Preserving Mr. Panmure," but on the whole these 
are less satisfactory than such works as " The Gay 
Lord Quex." 

Pinero is a technician par excellence. His mastery 
of plot-construction, his ability to create and main- 
tain suspense, are indisputably admirable. His crea- 
tion of character, especially in " The Benefit of the 
Doubt," " Lady Bountiful," " The Gay Lord Quex," 
and " The Thunderbolt," is masterly and convincing. 
Yet on the whole Pinero's plays, by reason of their 



ARTHUR PINERO 5 

occasional falsity to life, their too conventional struc- 
ture, their dialogue, which is in places exceedingly 
stilted, fall short of true greatness. 

PLAYS 
£200 A Year (1877). 
The Comet (1878). 
Daisy's Escape (1879). 
Hester's Mystery (1880). 
Bygones (1880). 
The Money-Spinner (1880). 

Performed at Wallack's Theater, New York 1882. 
Imprudence (1881). 

Performed at the Boston Museum 1882. 
The Squire (1881). 

Performed at Daly's Theater, New York 1882. 
Girls and Boys (1882). 

Performed at Daly's Theater, New York 188S. 
The Rector (1883). 

Performed at the Boston Museum 1883. 
Lords and Commons (1883). 

Performed at Daly's Theater, New York 1885. 
The Rocket (1883). 
Low Water (1884). 
In Chancery (1884). 

Performed at the Madison Square Theater, New 
York 1885. 
The Magistrate (1885), 

Performed at Daly's Theater, New York 1885. 
The Schoolmistress (1886). 

Performed at the Standard Theater, New York 
1887. 



6 ARTHUR PINERO 

The Hobby-Horse (1886). 

Performed at the Knickerbocker Theater, New 
York 1887. 
Dandy Dick (1887). 

Performed at Daly's Theater, New York 1887. 
Sweet Lavender (1888). 

Performed at Daly's Theater, New York 1888. 
The Weaker Sex (1888). 

Performed by the Kendals on their American tour, 
1890. 
The Profligate (1889). 

Performed at Wallack's Theater, New York 1900. 
The Cabinet Minister (1890). 

Performed at Daly's Theater, New York 1892. 
Lady Bountiful (1891). 

Performed at the Lyceum Theater, New York 1891 
and at the Boston Museum. 
The Times (1891). 
The Amazons (1893). 

Performed at the Lyceum Theater, New York 
1894. 
The Second Mrs. Tanqueray (1893). 

Performed by the Kendals, Star Theater, New 
York 1893, and later by Mrs. Patrick Campbell. 
The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith (1895). 

Performed by Sir John Hare, Abbey's Theater. 
New York 1895. 
The Benefit of. the Doubt (1895). 

Performed at the Lyceum Theater, New York 1896. 
The Princess and the Butterfly (1897). 

Performed at the Lyceum Theater, New York 1897. 



ARTHUR PINERO 7 

Trelawney of the 'Wells' (1898). 

Performed at the Lyceum Theater, New York 
1898. 
The Gay Lord Quex (1899). 

Performed by Sir John Hare at the Criterion The- 
ater, New York 1900. 
Iris (1901). 

Performed at the Criterion Theater, New York 
1902. 
Letty (1903). 

Performed at the Hudson Theater, New York 1904. 
A Wife Without a Smile (1904). 

Performed at the Empire Theater, New York 
1904. 
His House in Order (1906). 

Performed at the Empire Theater, New York, 
1906. 
The Thunderbolt (1908). 

Performed at the New Theater, New York 1910, 
and by the Drama Players on tour 1912-3. 
Mid-Channel (1909). 

Performed, with Ethel Barrymore, at the Empire 
Theater, New York 1910. 
Preserving Mr. Panmure (1911). 

Performed, with Gertrude Elliott, New York, and 
on tour 1911-^. 
The " Mind-the-Paint " Girl (1912). 

Performed, with Billie Burke, at the Lyceum 
Theater, New York, and on tour 1912-3. 
The Widow of Wasdale Head (1912). 
Playgoers (1913). 



d ARTHUR PINERO 

(Three or four adaptations and a libretto are not 
included in the above list.) 

Walter H. Baker of Boston publishes the follow- 
ing: " The Magistrate," " The Schoolmistress," " The 
Hobby-Horse," " Sweet Lavender," " The Weaker 
Sex," " The Profligate," " The Cabinet Minister," 
" Lady Bountiful," " The Times," " The Amazons," 
" The Second Mrs. Tanqueray," " The Notorious 
Mrs. Ebbsmith," " The Gay Lord Quex," " Iris," 
" Letty," " A Wife Without a Smile," " His House in 
Order," " The Thunderbolt," " Mid-Channel," and 
" Preserving Mr. Panmure." The Dramatic Publish- 
ing Company (Sergei) publishes: "The Benefit of 
the Doubt " and "Trelawney of the * Wells.' " Samuel 
French publishes : " The Money-Spinner," " The 
Squire/' " The Rocket," " In Chancery," " Hester's 
Mystery," and " The Princess and the Butterfly." 
The rest of the early plays are unobtainable. " The 
' Mind-the-Paint ' Girl " is published by William 
Heinemann, London; "Playgoers" by Samuel 
French. " The Widow of Wasdale Head " is not yet 
published. " The Second Mrs. Tanqueray " is in- 
cluded in " Chief Contemporary Dramatists " 
(Houghton Mifflin). 

References: Hamilton Fyfe, "Arthur Wing 
Pinero " (Greening & Co., London) ; William Archer, 
" Real Conversations " (Heinemann, London), 
"About the Theater" (Unwin, London), "English 
Dramatists of To-day " (Sampson Low, London), 
"The Theatrical World" (Walter Scott, London), 
" Playmaking " (Small, Maynard) ; Mario Borsa^ 



ARTHUR PINERO 9 

" The English Stage of To-day " (Lane) ; Augustin 
Filon, " The English Stage " (Dodd, Mead) ; Oscar 
Heermann, " Living Dramatists " (Brentano) ; E. E. 
Hale, Jr., " Dramatists of To-day " (Holt) ; George 
Moore, " Impressions and Opinions " (Brentano) ; 
Ashley Dukes, " Modern Dramatists " (Dramatic 
Publishing Co.) ; P. P. Howe, " Dramatic Portraits " 
(Kennerley) ; Bernard Shaw, " Dramatic Opinions 
and Essays " (Brentano) ; A. B. Walkley, " Drama 
and Life " (Brentano), " Playhouse Impressions " 
(Unwin, London) ; Frank Wadleigh Chandler, " As- 
pects of Modern Drama " (Macmillan) ; H. M. Wal- 
brook, " Nights at the Play " (Ham-Smith, London) ; 
Cecil F. Armstrong, " From Shakespere to Shaw " 
(Mills and Boon, London) ; Clayton Hamilton, 
"Studies in Stagecraft" (Holt), "The Theory of 
the Theater " (Holt) ; Brander Matthews, " Inquiries 
and Opinions " (Scribner), " A Study of the Drama " 
(Houghton Mifflin); Arthur Pinero, "Robert Louis 
Stevenson, the Dramatist " (Columbia University) ; 
Ludwig Lewisohn, " The Modern Drama " 
(Huebsch). — Magazines: Munsey, vol. x (p. 247); 
Book-buyer, vol. xvii (p. 301); Forum, vol. xxvi (p. 
119), vol. xlvii (p. 494); Blackwood's, vol. clxvii (p. 
837); The Theatre, vol. xxxiv (p. 3); Nation, vol. 
Ixxxiii (p. 211); North American Review, vol. 
clxxxviii (p. 38); Critic, vol. xxxvii (p. 117); The- 
atre, vol. xxxvii (p. 346) ; Collier's, vol. xlviii (p. 34) ; 
Living Age, vol. cclxxviii (p. 265). 



SWEET LAVENDER 

A domestic drama in three acts. First performed 
in 1888. 

" Sweet Lavender " is one of the most popular of 
Pinero's plays. In London it achieved the phenom- 
enal record, for those days, of a run of 683 nights, 
and on its revival not long after, of 737 nights. Since 
that time it has been seen in America, Canada, Russia, 
South Africa, Australia, Germany, and Italy. Its 
success is attributable to its genial, if mawkish, senti- 
ment, its optimism, and its kindly humor. In the 
light of the dramatist's later works, it appears old- 
fashioned and conventional in the extreme. 

1. Probably no fitter play could be named to 
typify the comedy of sentiment than " Sweet 
Lavender." Pinero calls it a " domestic drama." 
It is not that, at least in the sense that Giacosa's 
" As the Leaves " or Ibsen's " John Gabriel Bork- 
man " are domestic dramas. Pinero's play touches 
merely the externals of life, deftly it is true, and 
with an occasional semblance of reality, but the 
dramatist's sympathy led him far astray both 
from human nature and from the truth that lies 
at the bottom of all things. This play should be 

10 



ARTHUR PINERO 11 

studied first for its occasional touches of char- 
acterization, then for the skill with which the 
author has constructed his story. 

2. Pinero's chief contribution to the theater of 
his time will be doubtless found to consist of a 
series of plays in which the stories are, as a whole, 
well thought out, interesting, ingenious, and 
economical in the technical sense of the term. He 
will be considered a consummate craftsman, but 
his comments on life and human character must 
take second place. He is not, however, negligible 
in this capacity: there are far too convincing 
proofs to the contrary. In the present play Dick 
Phenyl is a case in question. The part is an 
especially rich one for a good actor, and can be 
made even more sympathetic on the stage than 
it is in print. Although he shares with the other 
characters in the play the annoying mannerism 
of speaking much too often in figurative language, 
he is still an affable fellow, Bulger, too, and Mrs. 
Gilfillian, are good minor sketches. The latter is 
a faint approximation to the Lady Bracknell and 
Duchess of Berwick types of Oscar Wilde. Her 
speech (p. 48) in the first act is distinctly 
Wildesque : " Innocent-looking ! Do you think I 
will have my plans — my plans and my brother's 
— ^frustrated by a girl with ulterior motives and 
eyes like saucers .'' " 



12 ARTHUR PINERO 

3. The various works * on the technic of the 
drama practically agree on the division of a play 
into five parts : exposition, development, climax, 
denouement, and catastrophe. Aristotle more 
succinctly said that a play must have a beginning, 
a middle, and an end. Most plays can be satisfac- 
torily so analyzed. " Sweet Lavender " presents 
an interesting clinical subject in its denouement. 
Trace, in the third act, the numerous threads in- 
troduced in the first and second: Wedderburn's 
relations with Mrs. Rolt, Minnie's with Bream, 
Clement's with Lavender. Notice how the sup- 
posed failure of Wedderburn is smoothed over, 
how the coincidences are made to appear a little 
less improbable than they would be without the 
dramatic preparation. Mr. Delaney's " Come, 
I'll tell ye how I put the pieces of the puzzle to- 
gether " is a good text for this analysis. 

4. The end is " happy," that is, lovers are 
united, obstacles overcome, even at the expense of 
verisimilitude and the canons of ordinary moral- 
ity. Undoubtedly the English public of the day 

* Freytag, " The Technique of the Drama " ; Elizabeth 
Woodbridge, " The Drama, Its Law and Technique " ; W. 
T. Price, " The Analysis of Play Construction and Dra- 
matic Principle," and "The Technique of the Drama"; 
Brander Matthews, "A Study of the Drama"; Clayton 
Hamilton, "The Theory of the Theater"; William Archer, 
"Playmaking"; Barrett H. Clark, "The Continental 
Drama of To-day"; George P. Baker, "The Technique 
of the Drama" (Houghton Mifflin). 



ARTHUR PINERO 13 

demanded this and few dramatists dared face the 
logical outcome of a situation of the sort. Five 
years later, however, Pinero did carry out an 
unpleasant theme, fearlessly : the success of " The 
Second Mrs. Tanqueray " is but another proof of 
the steady intellectual advance of the British the- 
ater public. But a curious instance of the dram- 
atist's wavering between personal conviction and 
his fear of the public is to be found in " The 
Profligate" (1889). Read this play, comparing 
the two endings: that of the acted version, which 
ends in reconciliation, and the original, terminat- 
ing in suicide. 



THE SECOND MRS. TANQUERAY 

A play in four acts. First performed in 1893. 

" The Second Mrs. Tanqueray " marked a decided 
step in advance of the drama of its day. To realize 
just how far in advance one must read some of its 
predecessors. One critic spoke of it as epoch-making, 
and William Archer, always reserved and careful in 
his judgments, disagreed with him only so far as to 
state that no single play could make that pretension, 
but that this one was a work " which Dumas might 
sign without a blush." The admirable construction, 
deep insight, and philosophical import of the theme, 
if not the characters, make of " The Second Mrs. 
Tanqueray " one of the finest dramatic achievements 
of the past two decades. 

1. The exposition has often been admired. 
Each step is prepared with the utmost skill, and 
the story of Aubrey's venture is unfolded before 
our eyes in a manner that is interesting and 
amusing. The first point to notice is that there 
is none of the obvious mannered conversation which 
is to be found in " Sweet Lavender." Pinero has 
left behind him those threadbare devices which 
introduced the history of his characters in a few 
lines: ". . .1, Edmund Bulger, widower, have 

14 



ARTHUR PINERO 15 

loved you, Mrs. Ruth Rolt, widow, ever since 
you fust set foot in the Temple, fifteen years 
ago, a-bearing your two-year-old baby in your 
arms, ma'am." But, in " The Second Mrs. Tan- 
queray," by means of an apparently casual con- 
versation, taking place at a natural meeting of 
Aubrey's friends, his past, his intentions, the re- 
lationship among the men and their wives, — all 
is made unmistakably clear. 

If this exposition is in many ways admirable, 
and if " The Second Mrs. Tanqueray " was an im- 
portant milestone technically, it is necessary to 
compare but one play of the past five years — Gals- 
worthy's " Justice " — to realize the advance made 
since 1893. Or, turning to Pinero's own later 
work: "The Thunderbolt," or "Mid-Channel." 
In " The Thunderbolt," the exposition is the more 
remarkable in that it not only seems casual, but 
inevitable. " Mid-Channel," on the other hand, is 
conventional in its opening, but the exposition is 
briefer and more to the point than in the play now 
under discussion. 

Compare the expositions in these three plays 
with that of " The Second Mrs. Tanqueray," 
Galsworthy's play has scarcely any, but is one re- 
quired? Could that of "The Second Mrs. Tan- 
queray " be summarily disposed of as is that of 
"Mid-Channel"? 

2. Pinero has always kept well abreast of the 



16 ARTHUR PINERO 

times in theatrical wares. A severe but usually 
just critic * said of him : " No other hand . . . 
could supply so efficiently the actual demand. 
When in the fullness of time and honors, Sir 
Arthur Pinero has need of an epitaph, it may well 
be this : He kept the theaters open." Certain it is 
that his early plays were influenced by Robertson 
and Gilbert, that " The Second Mrs. Tanqueray " 
and the half-dozen plays of its sort that fol- 
lowed, were more or less influenced by Ibsen, and 
the critic above quoted adds that " perhaps it 
would not have been possible ... to have 
achieved the first act of ' The Thunderbolt ' if 
the third act of ' The Voysey Inheritance ' had 
not shown him the way." Nevertheless Pinero, like 
Augustus Thomas, has been quick to detect the 
trend of public thought and feeling, and no less 
alert to take advantage of it and write a " play 
of the hour." 

This timeliness is perhaps one of the most im- 
portant elements of successful plays. In 1893, 
Ibsen was a new name in England ; his plays were 
beginning to be translated, discussed, produced. 
The Independent Theater, under J. T. Grein, had 
produced " Ghosts " in 1891, and invoked a storm 
of invective from the press ; Bernard Shaw was 
hurling thunderbolts at the British public in the 
columns of the Saturday Review; Henry Arthur 

•P. P. Howe in "Dramatic Portraits" (Kcnneriey). 



ARTHUR PINERO 17 

Jones was lecturing on the " Renascence of the 
Drama." It was the day of the New Woman. 
And Pinero wrote a powerful play around a woman 
with a past ; five years previously, it is safe to say 
that the play would not have been successful. As 
it was, the time was ripe. 

There is nothing reprehensible in the practice: 
the theater must attempt to treat of people, cus- 
toms, and ideas of the day. In America it is un- 
deniable that timeliness is carried to an extreme. 
After some sensational trial we may expect a 
welter of plays dealing with the subject, just as 
after the production of Brieux's " Damaged 
Goods," a number of plays, concerned more or less 
directly with the same theme, made their appear- 
ance. Let a play like " The Yellow Jacket " or 
" Alias Jimmy Valentine " enjoy a long run, and 
it is but a question of a few months before the mar- 
ket is likely to be glutted with Chinese and crook 
plays. 

3. In his lecture on " R. L. Stevenson : the Dram- 
atist," Pinero said: " What is dramatic talent.'' Is 
it not the power to project characters, and to 
cause them to tell an interesting story through the 
m.edium of dialogue ? This is dramatic talent ; and 
dramatic talent, if I may so express it, is the raw 
material of theatrical talent. Dramatic, like 
poetic, talent is born, not made ; if it is to achieve 
success on the stage, it must be developed into 



18 ARTHUR PINERO 

theatrical talent by hard study, and generally by 
long practice. For theatrical talent consists in 
the power of making your characters not only tell 
a story by means of dialogue, but to tell it in such 
skilfully devised form and order as shall, within 
the limits of an ordinary theatrical representation, 
give rise to the greatest possible amount of that 
peculiar kind of emotional effect the production of 
which is the one great function of the theater." 
Pinero is precisely the dramatist who has devel- 
oped his dramatic into a thoroughly theatrical 
talent, by " hard study " and by " long practice." 
The transition may be best observed by comparing 
the " dramatic " " Sweet Lavender " with the 
" theatrical " " Second Mrs. Tanqueray." 



IRIS 

A drama in five acts. First performed in IQOl. 

In " The Second Mrs. Tanqueray " Pinero is con- 
tent with placing before his audience a situation, and 
selecting a certain group of personagesr to work it out. 
In " Iris," although there is a situation, we are in- 
clined to believe that the author wished to draw the 
picture of a woman, struggling with a situation, rather 
than a situation in which people struggle to extri- 
cate themselves. The earlier play was more of a 
story, the later, a painting. No such painting, it is 
true, as " Hedda Gabler," still it is as near to it 
as this dramatist ever came. " Iris " is justly ac- 
claimed as one of the best technical feats of Pinero, 
for the story is simply and interestingly told, the 
character of the heroine carefully limned, the logical 
needs of the theme rigidly supplied. 

1. In the case of " Iris," the exposition is of 
especial importance. Every step she takes in her 
downward course throughout the play is dependent 
upon (1) the conditions of the will, and (2) her 
character. These two points must be indelibly im- 
pressed upon the mind of the audience, or what 
follows will be unconvincing. Take careful note 
of the innumerable references to Iris's tempera- 

19 



20 ARTHUR PINERO 

ment ; the opening scene, between Miss Pinsent and 
Kane, is full of them, and when Iris herself enters 
(p. 8) she adds to our store of knowledge. Kane's 
". . . it is only fair to assume that your hus- 
band, knowing how greatly your happiness de- 
pends upon personal comfort, was actuated by a 
desire to safeguard you " (the italics are mine) is 
peculiarly significant. Iris even goes so far as to 
quote some of the terms of the will. 

Does Pinero succeed in convincing you of the 
probability of the conditions? Does he prepare a 
sufficiently solid foundation upon which to build 
the rest of the structure? Is the exposition of 
" Iris " more economical or less so than that of 
" The Second Mrs. Tanqueray "? In what way is 
it superior to that of "Sweet Lavender"? Com- 
pare it with the exposition of " Mid-Channel." 

2. Pinero has selected a character more subtle 
and more difficult to portray than Mrs. Tan- 
queray: Iris, a weak woman, taxes the dramatist's 
powers far more than Paula, whose very strength 
forms, as it were, a point of resistance against 
which to build situations. Positive wills, active 
agents, are the stuff of which drama is made, while 
passive and negative ones present numerous ob- 
stacles for the maker of plays. In " The Second 
Mrs. Tanqueray " the conflict of wills furnishes 
ready-made material, in " Iris " the lack of will, 
the drifting of the heroine, forces the dramatist 



ARTHUR PINERO 21 

at every turn to invent situations; it calls upon 
him to exert all his ingenuity to keep the story 
moving. 

Compare the two plays from this standpoint. 
Notice how carefully Pinero has built up his situa- 
tions, and how each one reveals some side of the 
character of Iris. 

S. The curtain falls nine times during this play. 
Nowadays it is the usual custom not to divide an 
act into scenes. What were Pinero's reasons? 
Does this division in any way detract from the 
dramatic effectiveness or the unity of the play? 
Is it a confession of weakness? Could the drama- 
tist have managed as well without this frequent 
division ? Does the process add to the interest and 
suspense? 

4. Pinero is a master of dramaturgic devices. 
One example will here suffice: shortly after the 
opening of the fourth act occurs the following 
stage-direction : 

(After some hesitation, he produces a bunch of 
keys and removes from it a latch-key. Weighing the 
key in his hand meditatively, he walks towards the 
settee; then he turns and tosses the key upon the 
table. . . . She picks up the key and, rising, drops 
it into a vase which stands upon the mantelpiece. 
The key strikes the bottom of the vase with a sharp 
sound. Having done this, she resumes her seat and 
sips her tea.) 



22 ARTHUR PINERO 

The significance of the act is doubly impressed 
upon the audience ; first Maldonado's detaching the 
key and throwing it upon the table, and second 
Iris's dropping it, " with a sharp sound," into the 
vase. This is a stroke of dramaturgic genius: it 
advances the plot and reveals character in a 
most masterly fashion. Find other instances of 
this in " Iris." 

5. In the last act Pinero has the courage which 
he lacked in " Sweet Lavender," and which some 
critics declare he lacked when he made Paula Tan- 
queray commit suicide in order to escape : the cour- 
age to show the logical consequences of his story. 
Trenwith's return is bitter, as it should be, Iris's 
confession is wrung from the depths of her being. 
There is at least an element of true tragedy in 
Iris's final effort to retain Trenwith, and in her 
query, " Would the home have been ready for 
me?" and his answer, "Yes." Then comes Mal- 
donado's denunciation of his mistress ; she must 
leave. This, too, savors of tragedy, but after she 
leaves, and " Maldonado utters a fierce cry and, 
with one movement of his arm, sweeps the china 
and hric-a-brac from the mantelpiece . . . over- 
turns the table with a savage Mck; then, raising a 
chair high in the air, he dashes it to the floor and 
breaks it into splinters . . . " — is this in keeping 
with the spirit of the last scene? Of the whole 
play? 



ARTHUR PINERO 28 

6. Eugene Walter's " The Easiest Way " * is in 
many respects similar to " Iris." Compare the 
two plays. 

* " The Easiest Way " has been printed only in a private 
edition, but it is often produced by stock companies. 



MID-CHANNEL 

A play in four acts. First performed in IQOp. 

As an example of the highest technical skill, of 
sound characterization, of a story well and interest- 
ingly unfolded, " Mid-Channel " must assume a posi- 
tion in the front rank of this dramatist's many works. 
It is one of the truest specimens of domestic drama 
produced in England. 

1. Pinero once said * that after toiling at the 
superb exposition of " The Thunderbolt," he was 
determined not to go to the trouble of avoiding 
every possible incongruity and short-cut usually 
employed in conventional expositions, so that when 
he came to the opening of " Mid-Channel " he de- 
cided to convey the necessary information to his 
audience in a straightforward and more or less 
conventional manner. It was scarcely worth his 
while to conceal what must be obvious to nearly all 
his auditors: the effort to lay before them as 
quickly as possible that part of the character and 
past history of his personages which must be 
known before the play proper can begin. Conse- 

* To Mr. Clayton Hamilton, who has courteously given 
me permission to print the above. 

24 



ARTHUR PINERO 25 

quently, almost the same ground is covered in a 
dozen pages which it took over sixty to cover in 
the preceding play. 

If the exposition of " Mid-Channel " is rather 
conventional, compact, obvious, would the play 
have gained by the insertion of a long and possibly 
more skilful exposition? In other words, what is 
gained by the method here adopted? And what is 
lost? 

2. The question. What is a tragedy? is consid- 
ered in " The Continental Drama of To-day " (p. 
152). Paul Hervieu says: "It is a play every 
part of which aims to create suspense, deep think- 
ing, and pity. It is accompanied no longer, as of 
old, with magnificent draperies ; it is a thing of 
the day, logical, prosaic, no longer bloody . . . 
the ways of fate are no longer manifested, as with 
the Greeks, in dreams, visions, or presentiments. 
Nowadays we try to show how the struggle for ex- 
istence bears down inexorably upon those who are 
imprudent, too weak to defend themselves, those 
whose passions are stronger than their will power." 
This of course is peculiarly applicable to the plays 
of M. Hervieu himself, who has written tragedies 
according to his own formula. The French drama- 
tist, as a rule, makes plays out of the human pas- 
sions; with him the passions are usually sufficient 
in themselves to explain failure and tragedy. 
With the Anglo-Saxon this is not enough : if pas- 



26 ARTHUR PINERO 

sions do work havoc with human lives, he is un- 
willing to offer that as the sole reason for failure; 
he must add external circumstances. Pinero in 
" Iris," however, accounts for the woman's ruin by 
her passion and her weakness, chiefly the latter, but 
he is careful to furnish a convenient Maldonado, 
who is an external force. The French dramatist 
can make his character declare, " C'est plus fort 
que moi ! " and proceed with the happy assurance 
that he has sufficient motivation. Pinero is not an 
emotional dramatist, in the sense that Donnay and 
D'Annunzio are emotional ; he must account for 
failure in some other way. In " Mid-Channel," 
Zoe gives us the reason for her failure and her 
husband's. She says : " It was doomed from the 
moment we agreed that we'd never be encumbered 
in our career with any — brats of children." 

Nearly all Pinero's " dramas " are tearless : they 
are dramatic, effective, terrible at times, and possi- 
bly horrible, but only in the rarest instances, 
lachrymose. Perhaps this is the result of his Eng- 
lish environment, and perhaps out of the fear that 
the British public dislikes any display of the 
deeper emotions, but Pinero prefers to be intellec- 
tual, in contradistinction to emotional, and wishes 
his plays to rest upon logic rather than upon pas- 
sion. But it must be remembered that his charac- 
ters are nearly all English. 

3. The " Raisonneur " is a stock figure in many 



ARTHUR PINERO 27 

of the plays of the nineteenth century, and in the 
plays of Dumas fils assumes an importance at 
times greatly out of keeping with the piece. In 
England, especially in the plays of Pinero and 
Henry Arthur Jones, he reappears as the middle- 
aged, kindly man-of-the-world, the adviser who in- 
variably sets matters straight and administers stiff 
doses of good advice to the characters of the play, 
as well as to the audience. He is at once a dra- 
matic expedient, a foil, and a relief-figure. In the 
hands of the actor for whom the part is written, 
he becomes a congenial link, as it were, between 
the audience and the characters. Some of the more 
striking instances are to be found in " The Liars," 
" Mrs. Dane's Defence," " The Case of Rebellious 
Susan," and " Dolly Reforming Herself," of 
Jones. In " Mid-Channel " it is Peter Mottram. 
Here, besides bringing about the temporary recon- 
ciliation between man and wife, he gives out the 
theme of the play (pp. 50-1), and offers a wel- 
come relief to the sordidness of the rest of the 
piece. 

Is there a character corresponding to Peter in 
"The Second Mrs. Tanqueray"? In "Sweet 
Lavender " ? 

4. The suicide in " Mid-Channel " is as inevi- 
table as that of " Hedda Gabler " or " Justice." 
The dramatist has left no possible escape for the 
unfortunate woman. Trace the steps leading up 



28 ARTHUR PINERO 

to the catastrophe. Is there a point in the play 
where matters could have been satisfactorily ar- 
ranged? Could a logical change of heart have 
taken place in Theodore? Zoe being as she was, 
and Theodore remaining obdurate — in strict ac- 
cordance with the character as we know him — 
could a reconciliation be made plausible? 



HENRY ARTHUR JONES 

Henry Arthur Jones was born at Grandborough, 
Bucks, in 1851. His early life was spent, and his 
primary education received in his native district. 
He went into business at Bradford and for some years 
was a commercial traveler. In 1878, at Exeter, he 
produced his first play, " Only 'Round the Corner." 
During the next few years he wrote a number of un- 
important little plays, of which " A Clerical Error " 
(1879) was produced in London. In 1882, he wrote, 
in collaboration with Henry Herman, his first great 
success, the famous melodrama, " The Silver King," 
which has held the stage for thirty-three years, and 
shows no signs of aging. " Saints and Sinners " 
(1884) called forth the unstinted praise of Matthew 
Arnold. From that day to this Jones has, through his 
essays, lectures, and many plays, carried on a work 
which is of incalculable benefit for the English stage. 

To Henry Arthur Jones, more than to any other 
single force, is due that Renascence and " uplift " 
— let the term be accepted in its best sense — of the 
contemporary English drama. Jones carries on the 
tradition of Congreve and Sheridan in high comedy. 
His best work, with the exception of " Michael and 
His Lost Angel," consists of comedies of manners. 
" The Liars," " The Case of Rebellious Susan," and 
" Dolly Reforming Herself," satires on contemporary 

29 



so HENRY ARTHUR JONES 

society, are among the finest character plays of the 
day. Jones's work is characterized by close observa- 
tion of the foibles of the upper classes and the aris- 
tocracy of England; a keen sense of humor — as op- 
posed to the cleverness and wit of Wilde and Pinero 
— which brings him much closer to the English Res- 
toration dramatists than any other of his day; and a 
keen sense of dramatic construction. Jones has writ- 
ten many comedies, but his melodramas — especially 
" The Silver King " and " The Middleman " — and his 
tragic play, " Michael and His Lost Angel " — must 
be taken into account in any estimate of the drama- 
tist's total output. 

PLAYS 

Only 'Round the Corner (1878). 

Hearts of Oak (1879). 

Harmony (1879). 

Elopement (1879). 

A Clerical Error (1879). 

Performed at the Star Theater, New York 1886. 
An Old Master (1881). 
His Wife (1881). 
Home Again (1881). 
A Bed of Roses (1881). 

The Silver King (in collaboration with Henry Her- 
man, 1882). 

Performed at Wallack's Theater, New York 1883. 
Chatterton (with Henry Herman, 1884). 

Performed, with Wilson Barrett, at the Grand 
Opera House, New York 1886. 



HENRY ARTHUR JONES 31 

Saints and Sinners (1884). 

Performed at the Madison Square Theater, New 
York 1885. 
HooDMAN Blind (in collaboration with Wilson Bar- 
rett, 1885). 
Performed at Wallack's Theater, New York 
1885. 
The Lord Harry (with Wilson Barrett, 1886). 
The Noble Vagabond (1886). 
Hard Hit (1887). 
Heart of Hearts (1887). 

Performed at the Madison Square Theater, New 
York 1888. 
Wealth (1889). 

Performed at Palmer's Theater, New York 1891. 
The Middleman (1889). 

Performed, with E. S. Willard, at Palmer's The- 
ater, New York 1890, and on tour. 
Judah (1890). 

Performed, with E. S. Willard, at Palmer's The- 
ater, New York 1891. 
Sweet Will (1890). 

Performed at the Standard Theater, New York 
1893. 
The Deacon (1890). 

Performed at Hoyt's Madison Square Theater, 
New York 1892. 
The Dancing Girl (1891). 

Performed, with E. H. Sothern, at the Lyceum 
Theater, New York 1891. 
The Crusaders (1891). 



32 HENRY ARTHUR JONES 

The Bauble Shop (1893). 

Performed, with John Drew, at the Empire The- 
ater, New York 1895. 
The Tempter (1893). 
The Masqueraders (1894). 

Performed at the Empire Theater, New York 1895. 
The Case of Rebellious Susan (1894). 

Performed at the Lyceum Theater, New York 1895. 
The Triumph of the Philistines (1895). 
Michael and His Lost Angel (1896). 

Performed at the Empire Theater, New York 1896, 
with Henry Miller and Viola Allen. 
The Rogue's Comedy (1896). 

Performed, with E. S. Willard, at Wallack's The- 
ater, New York 1897. 
The Physician (1897). 

Performed, with E. S. Willard, at Wallack's The- 
ater, New York 1897. 
The Liars (1897). 

Performed, with John Drew, at the Empire The- 
ater, New York 1898. 
The Manceuvres of Jane (1898). 

Performed at Daly's Theater, New York 1900. 
Carnac Sahib (1899). 
The Lackey's Carnival (1900). 
Mrs. Dane's Defence (1900). 

Performed, with Margaret Anglin, at the Empire 
Theater, New York 1901. 
The Princess's Nose (1902). 
Chance the Idol (1902). 



HENRY ARTHUR JONES 3S 

Whitewashing Julia (1903). 
Joseph Entangled (1904). 

Performed at the Columbia Theater, San Francisco 
1904. 
The Chevaleer (1904) 
The Heroic Stubbs (1906). 
The Hypocrites (1906). 

Performed at the Hudson Theater, New York 1906. 
The Goal (1907). 

Performed at the Princess Theater, New York 
1914. 
The Evangelist (1907). 

Performed at the Knickerbocker Theater, New 
York 1907. 
Dolly Reforming Herself (1908). 

Performed at the Fine Arts Theater, Chicago 1913. 
We Can't Be as Bad as All That (1910). 

Performed at Nazimova's 39th Street Theater, New 
York 1910. 
The Ogre (1911). 
Lydia Gilmore (1912). 

Performed at the Lyceum Theater, New York 1912. 
The Divine Gift (1912). 
Mary Goes First (1913). 

Performed, with Marie Tempest, at the Comedy, 
New York 1914. 
The Lie (1914). 

Performed, with Margaret Illington, at the Hudson 
Theater, New York 1914. 

Two or three one-act trifles, together with Jones's 
and Herman's adaptation of " A Doll's House " — 



84 HENRY ARTHUR JONES 

entitled " Breaking a Butterfly " — are omitted from 
the above list. 

In French's " International Copyrighted Edition " 
the following plays are published: "Harmony," 
" Elopement," " Hearts of Oak," " A Clerical Error," 
" An Old Master," " A Bed of Roses," " The 
Deacon," and " Sweet Will." In French's special 
series of Jones's plays are: "Joseph Entangled," 
" The Silver King," " The Dancing Girl," " The Mid- 
dleman," " The Hypocrites," " Mrs. Dane's De- 
fence," " The Case of Rebellious Susan," " The 
Liars," " The Masqueraders," " Dolly Reforming 
Herself," " The Manoeuvres of Jane," " Judah," 
" The Physician," " The Rogue's Comedy," " The 
Triumph of the Philistines," " The Crusaders," 
" Whitewashing Julia," and " The Tempter." Mac- 
millans publish: " Carnac Sahib," " Michael and His 
Lost Angel," and " Saints and Sinners." " The Di- 
vine Gift " and " The Lie " are published by Doran, 
and " Mary Goes First," by Doubleday, Page (Drama 
League Series). In "The Theater of Ideas" 
(Doran) are: "The Goal," "Her Tongue," and 
" Grace Mary." The other plays are either not pub- 
lished, or else are only privately printed. " Michael 
and His Lost Angel " is included in " Chief Con- 
temporary Dramatists" (Houghton Mifflin). 

References: William Archer, " The Theatrical 
World" (Walter Scott, London), "About the The- 
ater" (Unwin, London), "English Dramatists of 
To-day" (Sampson Low, London), " Playmaking " 
(Small, Maynard) ; Mario Borsa, " The English 



HENRY ARTHUR JONES 35 

Stage of To-day " (Lane) ; Augustin Filon, " The 
English Stage " (Dodd, Mead) ; George Moore, " Im- 
pressions and Opinions" (Brentano); Bernard Shaw, 
" Dramatic Opinions and Essays " (Brentano) ; P. P. 
Howe, " Dramatic Portraits " (Kennerley) ; A. B. 
Walkley, " Drama and Life " (Brentano) ; J. T. 
Grein, " Dramatic Criticism " (Evelyn Nash, Lon- 
don) ; Frank Wadleigh Chandler, " Aspects of Mod- 
ern Drama " (Macmillan) ; Clayton Hamilton, " The 
Theory of the Theater " and " Studies in Stagecraft " 
(Holt) ; Ludwig Lewisohn, " The Modern Drama " 
(Huebsch) ; Brander Matthews, " A Study of the 
Drama " (Houghton MifBin) ; introductions to Mac- 
millan (early) editions of " Michael and His Lost 
Angel," " The Crusaders," " Saints and Sinners," and 
" Judah." By Henry Arthur Jones: "The Renas- 
cence of the English Drama " (Macmillan), " The 
Foundations of a National Drama " (Doran) ; intro- 
ductions to " The Divine Gift," " The Case of Re- 
bellious Susan," and " The Theater of Ideas." — 
Magazines: North American, vol. clxxxvi (p. 205); 
Reader, vol. ix (p. 105) ; Blackwood's, vol. xciv (p. 
283). 



THE SILVER KING 

A drama in five acts by Henry Arthur Jones and 
Henry Herman. Firsrt performed in 1882. 

" The Silver King " was declared by William 
Archer to be " quite the best of modern English melo- 
dramas." Mr. Archer's words have been borne out, 
if popularity for a period well over a quarter-century 
be a criterion. Many thousands of performances all 
over the Continent, in America, South Africa, and 
Australia, have rendered the play celebrated. This 
universal appeal rests in the simplicity, sincerity, in- 
terest in the plot, and to a certain extent in the sym- 
pathetic characters, and above all, in the authors' 
grasp of the story, and their skill in conducting it 
from first to last without hesitation. 

1. Melodrama as distinguished from tragedy is 
that form of drama in which the story is of more 
importance than the personages who are in it : the 
audience will remember the plot, the incidents, the 
big scenes in " The Silver King " longer than it 
will the characteristics of Denver. In " Hamlet," 
on the other hand, it will discuss and ponder over 
Hamlet's character long after it has forgotten 
the story and incidents of the Prince of Denmark. 

36 



HENRY ARTHUR JONES S7 

The writer of melodrama invents a frame for 
his characters, the writer of tragedy will conceive 
a human being and allow a framework to form 
itself about him, imposing only such situations as 
will reveal the inmost soul of that character, and 
hold the interest of an audience at the same time. 
Briefly, the hero in tragedy, because he is as he is, 
brings down the tragedy upon himself, the hero 
in melodrama merely moves hither and thither 
until at last the author wills that he fall into the 
heroine's arms at the final curtain, and the villain 
be foiled, by fair means or foul. 

Distinguish the elements of melodrama in " The 
Silver King." In exactly what way does the 
author dictate the actions of the various person- 
ages? Are there any elements of true tragedy in 
the play? Of serious drama — drama in the sense 
that Pinero's " Iris " is drama ? 

2. It will be observed that " The Silver King " 
is divided into seventeen scenes. Why is this? 
Does it tend to destroy the unity of the acts which 
are thus divided, or of the entire play? Or is it a 
confession of weakness on the part of the drama- 
tists? 

3. The essential difference between melodrama 
and tragedy — or a serious play of any kind — is 
exemplified in the last scene of the first act. Since 
in the former the dramatist directs the course of 
events, and the hero follows in their wake, chance 



38 HENRY ARTHUR JONES 

plays an important part ; but in the latter, in order 
that the audience may believe and eventually see 
that the hero's weakness or, it may be, strength, 
combined often with external circumstances, causes 
his downfall, nothing must be left to chance. His 
downfall must seem inevitable. In the third scene 
of the first act of " The Silver King " Denver hap- 
pens to arrive at Ware's home, at the precise 
moment when it is being robbed; Ware enters, the 
burglar shoots him, after applying the chloroform 
pad to Denver, across whose prostrate form he has 
stumbled, and the burglars leave. As Denver 
awakes to consciousness, he speaks the following 
soliloquy : 

. . . Where's my hat? {Gets up, takes candle, 
staggers, steadies himself, comes round table, sees 
Ware.) What's 'that? It's Geoffrey Ware! What's 
he doing here? Get up, will you? (Kneels down.) 
Ah, what's this? Blood! He's shot! My God, I've 
murdered him ! No ! No ! Let me think. What 
happened? Ah yes, I remember now — I came in 
at the door, he sprang at me and then we struggled. 
(Looking at revolver) My revolver. — One barrel 
fired — I've murdered him. No, he's not dead, Geof- 
frey Ware ! Is he dead ? (Eagerly feeling Ware's 
pulse) No, it doesn't beat. (Tears down Ware's 
waistcoat and shirt, puts his ear over Ware's heart.) 
No, no, quite still, quite still. He's dead! Dead! 
Dead ! Oh, I've killed him — I've killed him. . . . 



HENRY ARTHUR JONES 39 

Although there is a certain poetic justice in the 
fact that Denver, the drunkard, believes himself to 
be the murderer of Ware, the various coincidences 
leading up to this scene, and the fact that Denver's 
tragedy hinges on a mistake, is too improbable 
for a serious play — i.e., for any play not a melo- 
drama or a farce. Tragedy demands that there 
be no accident, no coincidence, to hasten the end of 
the hero : each event in his downward path must 
be brought about either through his own fault, or 
through the implacable laws of fate. Hamlet is 
the victim of his own weakness, Romeo and Juliet 
are the victims of fate and circumstances over 
which they have no control. Denver is the victim 
of circumstances controlled by the dramatist. 

4. Melodrama is a flexible form, yet in its 
numerous manifestations there are constantly re- 
curring character-types ; among these are the vil- 
lain, hero, and heroine. The villain may be 
thought of as the force at variance with the hero 
and the heroine. Before the play reaches the end, 
the villain must be overpowered through the agency 
of the hero, who must be united with the heroine. 

In "The Silver King," who is the hero.? The 
heroine .P The villain.? What is the struggle be- 
tween the opposing forces ? At what precise point 
does the decisive struggle take place.? How does 
the hero overcome the villain.? Does the heroine 
help to precipitate the catastrophe.? 



MICHAEL AND HIS LOST ANGEL 

A play in five acts. First performed in 1896. 

" Michael and His Lost Angel " is Jones's most 
ambitious play. Into it he put his deepest convic- 
tions, and succeeded in producing a tragic drama of 
passion which may well hold its own with the finest 
plays of the time. Bernard Shaw, most catholic of 
critics, said of the play: " It seems ... to me to 
be a genuinely sincere and moving play, feelingly 
imagined, written with knowledge as to the man and 
insight as to the woman by an author equipped not 
only with the experience of an adept playwright, and 
a kindly and humorous observer's sense of contempo- 
rary manners, but with that knowledge of spiritual 
history in which Mr. Jones's nearest competitors seem 
so stupendously deficient." The play was not a suc- 
cess, owing to difficulties in the original casting, it 
was said, but the truth of the matter is expressed in 
Shaw's words: "The melancholy truth of the matter 
is that the English stage got a good play, and was 
completely and ignominiously beaten by it." 

1. Measuring "Michael and His Lost Angel" 
according to the definitions of tragedy set forth 
by Hervieu, and those considered in connection 
with "The Silver King" and Pinero's "Iris," 
into what category would this play go? 

40 



HENRY ARTHUR JONES il 

S. In his " Dramatic Opinions and Essays " 
(Vol. I, pp. 309-10) Bernard Shaw remarks: "As 
to the first two acts, I ask nothing better; but at 
the beginning of the third comes the parting of 
our ways ; and I can point out the exact place 
where the roads fork. In the first act, Michael, a 
clergyman, compels a girl who has committed what 
he believes to be a deadly sin, to confess it publicly 
in church. In the second act he commits that sin 
himself. At the beginning of the third act he 
meets the lady who has been his accomplice ; and 
the following words pass between them : — 

Audrie. — You're sorry? 
Michael. — No. And you? 
Audrie. — No. 

Now, after this, what does the clergyman do? 
Without giving another thought to the all-signifi- 
cant fact that he is not sorry — ^that at the very 
point where, if his code and creed were valid, his 
conscience would be aching with remorse, he is not 
only impenitent, but positively glad, he proceeds to 
act as if he really were penitent, and not only puts 
on a hair shirt, but actually makes a confession to 
his congregation in the false character of a con- 
trite sinner, and goes out from among them with 
bowed head to exile and disgrace, only waiting in 
the neighborhood until the church is empty to 
steal back and privily contradict his pious impos- 



42 HENRY ARTHUR JONES 

ture by picking up and hiding a flower which the 
woman has thrown on the steps of the altar." 

Shaw condemns Michael for not being true to 
his own conviction : he should either have been 
sorry, and told Audrie so — in which case there 
would have been no play — or else not have con- 
fessed himself wrong. In the latter case, the play 
would have been tragic in every sense of the word, 
for society (external circumstances) would have 
prevented the couple from living as they thought 
it right to live, but as it is, we have nothing but 
a weakling, who is at most a pathetic and not a 
tragic figure. 

How far is Shaw's criticism valid? Does Jones 
intend Michael to be contrite.? Is he really " not 
sorry," as he declares to Audrie."^ Is the play a 
true tragedy .-^ 

3. Jones has repeatedly asserted that literature 
and the drama should be inseparable ; a play must 
stand the test of time, and to do this, it must 
stand the test of print. In his essay on " Litera- 
ture and the Modern Drama " * he says : " If your 
drama is truly alive, it will necessarily be litera- 
ture." He continues : " If you have faithfully and 
searchingly studied your fellow-citizens ; if you 
have selected from amongst them those characters 
that are interesting in themselves, and that also 
possess an enduring human interest ; if in study- 
* In "The Foundations of a National Drama" (Doran). 



HENRY ARTHUR JONES 43 

ing these interesting personalities, you have se- 
verely selected from the mass of their sayings and 
doings and impulses, those words and deeds and 
tendencies which mark them at once as individuals 
and types ; if you have then recast and re-imagined 
all the materials ; if you have cunningly shaped 
them into a story of progressive and cumulative 
action ; if you have done all this, though you may 
not have used a single word but what is spoken 
in ordinary American intercourse to-day, I will 
venture to say that you have written a piece of 
live American literature — ^that is, you have writ- 
ten something that will not only be interesting on 
the boards of the theater, but can be read with 
pleasure in your library, can be discussed, argued 
about, tasted, and digested as literature." 

Literature, then, in the drama, is not altogether 
a matter of style, it concerns itself with arrange- 
ment, selection, appropriateness to the characters 
in the mouths of which words are put, and plot. A 
play may be written with no pretense to style, and 
yet be good literature. Certain it is that in the 
plays of Stephen Phillips the language is finer, 
the style nearer to perfection than is that of 
Sardou, yet the Frenchman was a far greater mas- 
ter of dramatic literature than the English poet. 

In what respects is " Michael and His Lost 
Angel " literature ? Can its style in itself take 
rank as literature? 



THE LIARS 

A comedy in four acts. First performed in 1897. 

" The Liars " is as fine an example of the comedy 
of manners in England as any written during the past 
quarter of a century. The skilful plot-construction, 
clever dialogue, and genial good-natured satire com- 
bine to make it a masterpiece. Behind all the amuse- 
ment is the eternal "lesson": that society in order 
to exisrt must adhere to a set of regulations, and that 
any infringement of its laws invariably brings social 
ruin. Needless to say, the idea is not forced upon 
us; it is allowed, as it should be, to evolve out of the 
story. 

1. In Francis's "Change" (see p. 176), the 
dramatist eliminates in the third act all the char- 
acters except the mother and Lizzie Ann, and con- 
centrates his attention on these two. He does this 
in order to make of his climax, which occurs at 
the end of the third act, a unified and striking 
scene. More than this, he must select from among 
his characters those to whom the sympathy of the 
audience is most naturally attracted. An audi- 
ence must always have its attention directed, as 
the play approaches its climax, to one person or 
one small group of persons ; or else to one situa- 

44 



HENRY ARTHUR JONES 45 

tion or crisis : when the plot becomes tense there 
must be no scattering of attention. In Henry 
Arthur Jones's " Mrs. Dane's Defence " there is 
a similar narrowing down of the interest, until the 
climax begins, in the cross-examination scene, 
where Mrs. Dane and her interlocutor occupy, fig- 
uratively as well as actually, the center of the 
stage. If the action were to be diagrammed it 
would be represented by a pyramid, the apex of 
which is the climax. 

In " The Liars," the dramatist appears to adopt 
the reverse method: instead of eliminating charac- 
ters, he adds to the number from moment to 
moment. From the very beginning of the third 
act, he begins building up for the climax. First, 
the letter from George, which Lady Jessica reads 
to Lady Rosamund ; then Freddie's entrance, add- 
ing a further complication ; then Sir Christopher's, 
which seems to promise a way out of the disagree- 
able predicament ; then Mrs. Crispen and Mrs. 
Coke, and finally George. Most inopportune of 
all, comes Archibald Coke, who precipitates the 
final downfall, and not long after, Gilbert, followed 
by Falkner. 

Study in detail the methods by which the cumu- 
lative effect is made. If, in " Change " and " Mrs. 
Dane's Defence," the rise in tension and the elim- 
ination of characters can be represented by a 
pyramid, would not that of " The Liars " be 



46 HENRY ARTHUR JONES 

represented by an inverted pyramid? What is the 
unity of the act? 

2. The play is virtually over at the fall of the 
curtain on the third act. What function does the 
last fulfil? To what means does the dramatist re- 
sort to make the last act interesting? Is it really 
superfluous ? 



OSCAR WILDE 

Born in Dublin in 1854, of cultured and well-to-do 
Irish parents, Oscar Wilde spent his early youth in 
his native country. For three years he attended Trin- 
ity College in Dublin, but completed his university 
education at Oxford, where he devoted himself to 
classical studies. After traveling in Italy and Greece 
he came to London. His first book was a volume of 
poems (1881); these were followed by his first play, 
" Vera, or the Nihilists," which was performed in the 
United States in 1883. " The Duchess of Padua," a 
verse tragedy, was performed in the United States in 
1891. Meantime Wilde had been in Paris, there mak- 
ing the acquaintance of many prominent literary men 
of the period. In 1884 he married, and was enabled 
thereby, as his wife was a woman of means, to de- 
vote his time to lecturing, writing poetry, essays, 
stories, and plays. The important plays — " Lady 
Windermere's Fan," " A Woman of No Importance," 
" An Ideal Husband," and " The Importance of Be- 
ing Earnest" — were produced between 1892 and 
1895. In 1895, Wilde was sentenced to two years' 
imprisonment with hard labor as the result of a 
trial instigated by him against the Marquess of 
Queensberry. (For details of the trial, which are be- 
yond the scope of the present work, see Arthur Ran- 
some's " Oscar Wilde," original edition, and Oscar 

47 



48 OSCAR WILDE 

Wilde's " De Profundis.") On leaving prison he 
adopted the name of Sebastian Melmoth and went to 
France; there, and at Naples, where he later went 
and wrote " The Ballad of Reading Gaol," he 
dragged out the few remaining years of his life. He 
died at Paris in 1900. 

In " De Profundis" Wilde said: "I took the 
drama, the most objective form known to art, and 
made of it as personal a mode of expression as the 
lyric or the sonnet; at the same time I widened its 
range and enriched its characterization." He refers 
to his " social " plays, and speaks rather of what he 
intended to do than of actual accomplishment. In 
his poetic plays and fragments — " The Duchess of 
Padua," " A Florentine Tragedy," and " Salome " — 
he wrote fairly effective pieces and some good pseudo- 
Elizabethan poetry ; in his other plays, with the ex- 
ception of " Vera," comedies which for their clever- 
ness, their ingenuity, and above all, their wit, are un- 
surpassed in modern times. 

Wilde, more than any other man of his day, recog- 
nized the " necessity of style." Although his plays 
occasionally contain specimens of very artificial and 
stilted language, still a farce like " The Importance of 
Being Earnest " is a triumph of literary yet lifelike 
literature. Wilde was assuredly a man of the theater : 
he could invent plots and develop an intrigue with 
extraordinary skill. Henry Arthur Jones. Sir James 
Barrie, Bernard Shaw, and Granville Barker owe 
much to their brilliant predecessor. 



OSCAR WILDE 49 

PLAYS 

Vera, or the Nihilists (1883). 

Performed at the Union Square Theater, New York 
1883. 
The Duchess of Padua (1891). 

Performed at the Broadway Theater, New York 
1891. 
Lady Windermere's Fan (1892). 

Performed at the Columbia Theater, Boston 1893. 
A Woman of No Importance (1893). 

Performed at Miner's Fifth Avenue Theater, New 
York 1893. 
An Ideal Husband (1895). 

Performed at the Lyceum Theater, New York 1895. 
The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). 

Performed at the Empire Theater, New York 1895. 
Salome (1896). 

Performed at the Berkeley Lyceum, New York 
1905. 

" La Sainte Courtisane " and " A Florentine Trag- 
edy " are poetic fragments. 

Methuen of London publishes the " Chief Works " 
of Wilde in twelve volumes. In the United States, 
John W. Luce publishes, in four volumes, the " Plays 
of Oscar Wilde." Walter H. Baker publishes paper 
editions of the " social " plays. In " The Plays of 
Oscar Wilde " (Cosmopolitan Edition) published by 
H. S. Nichols, all the plays, except the two fragments 
above mentioned, are gathered together in a single 
volume. " Lady Windermere's Fan " is included in 



50 OSCAR WILDE 

" Chief Contemporary Dramatists " (Houghton 
Mifflin). 

References: Leonard Cresswell Ingleby, "Oscar 
Wilde " (Werner Laurie, London) ; Arthur Ran- 
some, " Oscar Wilde " (Kennerley) ; Lord Alfred 
Douglas, " Oscar Wilde and Myself " (Lane) ; Anna, 
Comtesse de Bremont, " Oscar Wilde and His 
Mother " (Everett, London) ; W. W. Kenilworth, " A 
Study of Oscar Wilde " (Fenno) ; Holbrook Jackson, 
" The Eighteen-nineties " (Kennerley) ; Archibald 
Henderson, " European Dramatists " (Stewart and 
Kidd) ; William Archer, " Playmaking " (Small, 
Maynard) ; " The Theatrical World " (Scott, Lon- 
don) ; Bernard Shaw, " Dramatic Opinions and Es- 
says " (Brentano) ; Mario Borsa, " The English 
Stage of To-day" (Lane); Augustin Filon, "The 
English Stage " (Chapman and Hall, London) ; C. E. 
Montague, " Dramatic Values " (Macmillan) ; F. W. 
Chandler, " Aspects of Modern Drama " (Macmil- 
lan) ; Ludwig Lewisohn, " The Modern Drama " 
(Huebsch). — Magazines: Current Literature, vol. 
xxxix (p. 156), vol. xli (p. 518), vol. xliv (p. 287); 
Westminster, vol. clxvi (p. 201); Arena, vol. xxxviii 
(p. 134); Dial, vol. xlviii (p. 26l); Bookman, vol. 
xxxiv (p. 389) ; Nation, vol. xcviii (pp. 566 and 598), 
vol. xcix (p. 374). 



SALOMfe 

A play in one act. Written in 1892, prohibited in 
Paris the same year. P'irst produced in that city 
in 1896. Originally written in French, translated 
by Lord Alfred Douglas. 

" Salome," like most of Wilde's plays, is a rich 
and ornate picture: it was written for the purpose of 
displaying its neat and well-balanced plot, for the 
sheer pleasure to be derived from its esthetic appeal.* 
The stage-directions offer the reader something of 
what is put into the production. The gorgeous and 
figured style of the dialogue is the work of a poet who 
plays with words. In the original the style is some- 
thing of a patch-work: there are many speeches 
reminiscent of Maeterlinck's early manner, and oc- 
casional snatches of Baudelaire and Flaubert. The 
play is, however, remarkable for its well-handled 
plot: it is thoroughly dramatic and holds the atten- 
tion of the audience to the end.f 

* The poetic drama in England is discussed in connec- 
tion with Stephen Phillips's " Paolo and Francesca " (p. 97), 
as " Salome " is scarcely a typical example, and is written 
in a foreign tongue. 

t"*In 1901, within a year of the author's death, it was 
produced in Berlin; from that moment it has held the 
European stage. It has run for a longer consecutive 
period in Germany than any play by any Englishman, 
not excluding Shakespeare. Its popularity has extended 

61 



52 OSCAR WILDE 

1. As the dramatist in a one-act play cannot 
afford much space for lengthy and careful exposi- 
tion, he often sums it up within a few pages or 
even a few lines. He is forced to concern himself 
with the play proper. The exposition of " Sa- 
lome " is not in the usual form : it is largely the 
revelation of facts at second-hand, and is done in 
a more or less summary fashion. The first eight 
or ten pages are devoted to conversation carried 
on by the Nubian, the Cappadocian, Herodias's 
Page, First and Second Soldiers, and the- Young 
Syrian. This is once interrupted by the Voice of 
Jokanaan. Nowadays we should perhaps regard 
this sort of exposition as " talky " ; it would " re- 
tard the action," yet in a poetic play a certain 
leeway may be allowed for the decorative side of 
the piece, the inherent beauty of the words, and 
we are willing to have the atmosphere created, and 
wait for the entrance of Salome herself before the 
story is appreciably advanced. 

Compare the opening scene of " Salome " with 
the corresponding scenes of Galsworthj^'s 
" Strife " and Augustus Thomas's " Arizona." 

S. As in most tragedies and in many plays of 
various kinds, there is a continual insistence of 
what may be termed the " fate motif." The 

to all countries where it is not prohibited. It is per- 
formed throughout Europe, Asia, and America. It is 
played even in Yiddish.' " Quotation from Robert Ross, 
in Ransome's " Oscar Wilde." 



OSCAR WILDE 53 

Witches' scenes in " Macbeth " are the classic ex- 
ample. How does Wilde make use of it in this 
play? 

3. Contrast is a basic principle of all art. In 
Richard Strauss's music for the opera of " Sa- 
lome," he makes use musically of the interruptions 
by Jokanaan, in order to afford a striking con- 
trast to the scene. In the play itself the first in- 
terruption — " After me will come another greater 
than I," etc. — is a good example of Wilde's use 
of contrast. The First Soldier and the Cappa- 
docian have been conversing in short sentences: 

First Soldier. — The Jews worship a God they 
cannot see. 

The Cappadocian. — I cannot understand that. 

First Soldier. — Indeed they believe only in those 
things they cannot see. 

The Cappadocian. — That seems absolutely ridicu- 
lous to me. 

Then comes the Voice of Jokanaan. — Again: 
Salome speaks of the moon : 

Salome. — How good it is to sree the moon ! She 
resembles a small coin. One might say she was a 
little flower of silver. She is cold and chaste, the 
moon — I am sure she is a virgin. She has a virgin's 
beauty — yes, she is a virgin. She has never soiled 
herself. She has never given herself to men, as the 
other goddesses have. 



54 OSCAR WILDE 

The Voice of Johanaan. — He is come, the Lord! 
He is come, the Son of Man. The centaurs have hid 
themselves, and the sirens have quitted the streams 
and lie under the leaves in the foresrts. 

Notice other examples of dramatic contrast such 
as the two above quoted. Is contrast sought by 
any other method.'' 

4. Although " Salome " was not written pri- 
marily to be played, it is one of the most effective 
of its author's dramatic works. Its success can- 
not be attributed to the accessory qualities — the 
literary style in particular — but rather to its in- 
herent theatrical appeal. Few other one-act plays 
move so swiftly, so surely, so rhythmically, 
straight up to a climax so well-devised and thrill- 
ing as this. 

Simplicity is the keynote to the action: from 
Salome's first inquiries about Jokanaan — " Is he 
an old man, the prop)iet.'' " there is a steady pro- 
cession of climaxes, or crises, each leading to an- 
other and a greater. Salome's curiosity, then her 
strange abnormal love for the uncouth prophet, 
Herod's entrance, the momentary pause in the 
tension, then the upward flight of the action, 
Herod's demand for Salome to dance, then an- 
other moment of suspense, and the rapid climax — 
here, in brief, are the qualities, here the unity, the 
effectiveness of " Salome." 



LADY WINDERMERE'S FAN 

A comedy in four acts. First performed in 1892. 

As the form of the play, its wit, its decoration, its 
pattern " were of more importance to Wilde than the 
theme or the characters," we may expect that this 
" play about a good woman " is more a clever excuse 
for an eflfective piece of drama and a good deal of 
verbal pyrotechnics than a sympathetic study of the 
protagonist. The play has stood the test of time, 
because it is a good story — in spite of its flagrant 
shortcomings — so that there is no need of discussing 
its sincerity of purpose. 

1. The first act — in the earlier version — ends 
with the following speech of Lord Windermere: 

(Calling after her.) Margaret! Margaret! (A 
pause) My God ! What shall I do ? I dare not 
tell her who this woman really is. The shame would 
kill her. (Sinks down into a chair and buries his face 
in his hands.) 

In later editions the speech is altered to: 

My God! What shall I do? I dare not tell 
her that this woman is her mother I 

Why was the change made? How does it affect 

55 



56 OSCAR WILDE 

the attitude of the audience in the succeeding acts? 
2. It is perhaps unjust to criticise this play as 
a serious comment on life, one in which we must 
believe and feel for the characters, yet some of 
the more important weak points must not be left 
unnoticed. Some pages from the end of the 
first act. Lady Windermere speaks the following 
lines : 

How horrible ! I understand now what Lord 
Darlington meant by the imaginary instance of the 
couple not two years married. Oh ! It can't be true 
— she spoke of enormous sums of money paid to this 
woman. I know where Arthur keeps his bank book 
— in one of the drawers of that desk. I might find 
out by that. I will find out. {Opens drawer.) No, 
it is some hideous mistake. {Rises and goes C.) 
Some silly scandal! He loves me! He loves me! 
But why should I not look.-* I am his wife, I have 
a right to look! {Returns to bureau, takes out book 
and examines it, page by page, smiles and gives a 
sigh of relief.) I knew it, there is not a word of 
truth in this stupid story. {Puts book back in drawer. 
As she does so, starts and takes out another book.) 
A second book — private — locked! {Tries to open it, 
but fails. Sees paper knife on bureau, and with it 
cuts cover from book. Begins to start at the first 
page.) Mrs. Erlynne — 600 — Mrs. Erlynne — 700 
— Mrs. Erlynne — 400. Oh! it is true! it is true! 
How horrible! {Throws book on floor.) 

{Enter Lord Windermere, C.) 



OSCAR WILDE 57 

The dramatic effect is too easily achieved, it is 
too obvious, and in consequence a little discrimina- 
tion will prevent our believing what we see. The 
improbability of the situation is too apparent. 
Further, Lord Windermere's giving Mrs. Erlynne 
the money, his poor excuse that " the shame would 
kill her" (Lady Windermere) are insufficient 
motives. Had Wilde really cared to make his 
audience believe, he would not have made as the 
basis of the rest of the play so insecure a founda- 
tion. But he was concerned chiefly with externals ; 
he knew that he was telling an interesting, if im- 
probable story, he had numerous choice epigrams 
and some effective dramatic material for the en- 
suing acts — and besides, had Lord Windermere 
told Lady Windermere the truth, there would have 
been no play! 

The fundamental mistake just pointed out in 
the first act weakens the ensuing action, and 
Lord Windermere's secret results in his wife's at- 
tempted elopement with Lord Darlington. There 
is no need multiplying instances of the like, for as 
the plot proceeds, the weak motivation becomes 
more and more apparent. By the time the " big " 
scene comes, with its heavy tirade, we doubt the 
sincerity of the characters. The " Believe what 
you choose about me " speech in the third act fails 
to ring true. 

3. Wilde's skill in preparing for an effective 



58 OSCAR WILDE 

scene has been already observed in " Salome." In 
" The Importance of Being Earnest " there is an 
even better example. What instances are there in 
the present play.'' 



THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST 

A " Trivial Comedy for Serious People " ; a farce in 
three acts. First performed in 1895. 

A farce is a comic play in which the audience is 
asked to accept impossible or highly improbable situa- 
tions for the time being. It differs radically from 
comedy, in that the audience must believe, for if the 
personages are to appear real — and they must, as 
character is of prime importance in comedy — they 
must move about in real situations, or at least such 
as we can give credence to. In a farce, then, what 
the characters do is of more importance than what 
they are. " The Importance of Being Earnest " is a 
farce, one of the best ever written, cleverly con- 
structed and delightfully amusing. There is only the 
slightest attempt at the sketching of character, while 
most of the personages are at best but caricatures ; the 
author's skill is brought to bear chiefly upon the situa- 
tions and the lines. It so happens that this farce 
contains more clever lines, puns, epigrams, and deft 
repartees than any other of modern times, but these 
are after all accessory. A farce may be written with- 
out these additions — it might well be pure pantomime. 
Wilde has thrown them in for full measure. 

1. The first act should be carefully studied after 
a reading of the entire play. Notice especially 

69 



60 OSCAR WILDE 

how the very comic scene in the second act — where 
Jack enters " in the deepest mourning " — is pre- 
pared for and led up to. In order that this scene 
shall be a surprise, and that the appearance of 
Jack, without a spoken word, shall evoke a series 
of recognitions in the mind of the audience, and 
a correlation of hitherto-unknown facts, the prep- 
aration in the first act must be skilfully done. 
The very casualness and apparent triviality of the 
dialogue tend to throw us off our guard. This is 
in a manner comparable with the art of the magi- 
cian who, while calling attention to a dexterous 
feat of legerdemain with his right hand, prepares^ 
the next trick with his left. So, in the first act, 
we are scarcely aware of the importance of 
Algernon's disquisition on " Bunburying," or of 
Algernon's writing the address which Jack gives to 
Gwendolyn " on his shirt-cuff," so nonchalantly 
are these points introduced. Yet, when the scene 
in question — in Act II — comes, we are perfectly 
acquainted with the necessary facts. 

2. That farce can be independent of clever 
dialogue is, as we have said, true, but when this 
can be added and made to fit into the action and 
further it, so much the better for farce. Oscar 
Wilde could not resist the temptation to be witty, 
though this practice was often detrimental to the 
rest of the work. In " Lady Windermere's Fan," 
indeed, the wit covers occasional bungling in the 



OSCAR WILDE 6l 

plot. But in " The Importance of Being 
Earnest," Wilde found a form which he could 
make " personal," and plot and wit go hand in 
hand. Take, for instance, the following dialogue 
from the first act: 

Algernon. — Well, my dear fellow, you need not 
eat as if you were going to eat it all. You behave as 
if you were married to her already. You are not 
married to her already, and I don't think you ever 
will be. 

Jack. — Why on earth do you say that.'' 

Algernon. — Well, in the first place, girls never 
marry the men they flirt with. Girls don't think it 
right. 

Jack. — Oh, that is nonsense. 

Algernon. — It isn't. It is a great truth. It ac- 
counts for the extraordinary number of bachelors that 
one sees all over the place. In the second place, I 
don't give my consent. 

The epigram is not forced, as many epigrams are 
forced in the first act of " A Woman of No Impor- 
tance " ; it is in keeping with the characters and 
situation. At the same time it serves the ends of 
drama, by advancing the story and affording some 
insight into the character of the personages. 

Find other examples of this in the present play. 

3. The third act of a farce — and it is extremely 
dangerous to extend a farce to more than three 



62 OSCAR WILDE 

acts — is unusually difficult. The effort to maintain 
interest for two acts often leaves a dramatist ex- 
hausted by the time he comes to conclude. 

How well has Wilde succeeded in accumulating 
his interest in the third act of this play? Has 
he relied upon the wit of the lines, or has he care- 
fully brought together the threads of action and 
given sufficient raison d'etre to his summing up? 
Compare the third act of " The Importance of 
Being Earnest " with the fourth of " Lady Win- 
dermere's Fan." Which is the better, and why? 



BERNARD SHAW 

George Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin in 1856. 
From the son's own account, the father must have 
been a rather shiftless and unimaginative man, but 
his mother — who was to exert great influence over the 
boy — was a woman of culture. The family, when 
George Bernard was a youth, found itself in reduced 
circumstances, and the son was forced to enter a 
land-agent's office in his native city. He was always 
interested in music (this taste he received from his 
mother) and science, and in the confinement of office 
life he gave early signs of his restless and revolution- 
ary character. In 1876 he went to London. For 
nine years he did literary hack-work, living in a 
shabby room on next to nothing. His efforts were 
long unrecognized, and he had to accept a small pit- 
tance for some years from his mother. Four novels — 
" The Irrational Knot," " Love Among the Artists," 
" The Unsocial Socialist," and " Cashel Byron's Pro- 
fession " — were written between 1880 and 1883, but 
they brought their author neither fame nor prosperity. 
He was not, however, wasting his time, for his asso- 
ciation with small clubs and societies — atheistical and 
socialistic in tendency — brought him into contact with 
a number of influential men. Among these was Sid- 
ney Webb, the economist. Waxing enthusiastic over 
the ideas of Henry George, he began to take active 
interest in the problems of poverty, and joined the 

63 



64 BERNARD SHAW 

Land Reform Union. For some years Shaw attended 
lectures, studied Socialism, Trade Unionism, and 
kindred subjects, and made friends with Edward Car- 
penter and William Morris. He made the acquaint- 
ance, too, of William Archer, in 1885, and was 
induced to enter the field of newspaper criticism. 
Before long, he fulfilled the functions, in turn, of 
musical, art, and dramatic critic. As dramatic critic 
of the Saturday Review, he exercised widespread in- 
fluence, as champion of Ibsen and the new ideas of 
dramatic writing, and enemy of the out-worn conven- 
tions so long accepted by the theater-world. Mean- 
time he had been busy with propaganda work in con- 
nection with the Fabian Society, and delivered numer- 
ous lectures on economic and political questions. In 
1892 his first play, "Widowers' Houses," was pro- 
duced at J. T. Grein's then recently-established Inde- 
pendent Theater. Then followed " The Philanderer " 
(1893), and " Mrs. Warren's Profession," which 
was censored and not produced until 1902. By this 
time Shaw had come to be considered a new force in 
the theater, but success, in the usual sense of the term, 
did not come to him for many years. Such organiza- 
tions as the Stage Society and the Court Theater — 
where Granville Barker produced play after play of 
Shaw — did most to bring him to the knowledge of 
the public at large, a knowledge acquired in Germany 
some years before. Shaw has been engaged in many 
branches of work, but his activity has not been lim- 
ited to books and plays. He is at the same time an 
eloquent speaker, economist, and great-spirited citizen. 



BERNARD SHAW 65 

In his first volume of the " Plays Pleasant and 
Unpleasant," Bernard Shaw said that, having had his 
eyesight tested by a specialist, he was informed that 
he was " an exceptional and highly fortunate being, 
optically, normal sight conferring the power of seeing 
things accurately, and being enjoyed by only about 
ten per cent, of the population, the remaining ninety 
per cent, being abnormal." Coming as he did, when 
Pinero and Jones were endeavoring to produce new 
and original works, albeit in the old forms, Shaw with 
his normal eyesight began looking about him and dis- 
covered that there were new things to say in new 
ways, and he said them in a manner which at first 
startled the " ninety per cent." In other words, his 
early attempts — like " Widowers' Houses " and 
" Mrs. Warren's Profession " — were advance-guard 
works, aimed primarily at those dramatists who still 
clung to the drawing-room type of play and the ideas 
that more often than not accompanied it. In the 
preface to the volume above referred to he says: 
" Finally, a word as to why I have labeled the three 
plays in this first volume Unpleasant. The reason 
is pretty obvious: their dramatic power is used to 
force the spectator to face unpleasant facts. No 
doubt all plays which deal sincerely with humanity 
must wound .the monstrous conceit which it is the 
business of romance to flatter." All of Shaw's early 
plays and most of his later ones were protests against 
the conventions, the lifelessness, the timidity of the 
play of the day. This he did as a dramatist; as a 
commentator on life, it is more difficult to determine 
just what he has done. 



66 BERNARD SHAW 

Shaw considers himself a Socialist and intellectual 
leader who chooses to employ the stage as the best 
means of promulgating his ideas. Until recently, at 
least, he has proclaimed himself not a dramatist but 
a preacher. Yet, in the final analysis, Shaw will be 
remembered as a remarkably clever and gifted drama- 
tist with an unusual endowment of wit and consider- 
able ability to tell a good story. His best plays — 
" Candida," " Arms and the Man," " Man and Super- 
man " — are occasionally marred as dramas by too 
much irrelevant " talk." Yet that talk is so amusing, 
so interesting, so witty, and so pregnant with ideas, 
that it is difficult to criticise the work as a whole. 
Shaw has at least proved that a good play can contain 
a vast amount of conversation and very little action. 

Shaw, in company with Jones and Pinero and 
Wilde, is one of the founders of modern English 
drama. As dramatic critic, lecturer, and dramatist, 
his influence has been probably the deepest and most 
widespread of any of his contemporaries. 

PLAYS 
Widowers' Houses (1892). 
The Philanderer (1893). 

Performed at the Little Theater, Chicago 1914. 
Mrs. Warren's Profession (1893)-* 

Performed at the Hyperion Theater, New Haven 
1905; Garrick Theater, New York, same year. 
Arms and the Man (1894). 

Performed, with Richard Mansfield, Herald Square 
Theater, New York 1894. 

* Produced in 1902. 



BERNARD SHAW 67 

Candida (1897). 

Performed at the Princess Theater, New York 
1903. 
The Man of Destiny (1897). 

Performed at the American Academy, New York 
1899. 
You Never Can Tell (1900). 

Performed at the Garrick Theater, New York 1905. 
The Devil's Disciple (1899). 

Performed at Bleeker Hall, Albany 1897. 
C^SAR AND Cleopatra (1899). 

Performed at the New Amsterdam Theater, New 
York 1906. 
Captain Brassbound's Conversion (1900). 

Performed, with Ellen Terry, Empire Theater, 
New York 1907. 
Man and Superman (1905). 

Performed, with Robert Lorraine, Hudson Theater, 
New York 1905. 
John Bull's Other Island (1904). 

Performed at the Garrick Theater, New York 1905. 
How He Lied to Her Husband (1905). 

Performed at the Berkeley Lyceum, New York 
1904. 
Major Barbara (1905). 
The Doctor's Dilemma (1906). 

Performed at Wallack's Theater, New York 1915. 
Getting Married (1908). 
The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet (1909). 

Performed by the Irish Players in several cities of 
the United States 1911-2. 



68 BERNARD SHAW 

Misalliance (ipiO). 

The Dark Lady of the Sonnets (IQIO). 

Fanny's First Play (1911). 

Performed at Collier's Comedy Theater, New York 
1912. 
Androcles and the Lion (19I8). 

Performed at Wallack's Theater, New York 1915. 
Pygmalion (1913). 

Performed, with Mrs. Patrick Campbell, Park The- 
ater, New York 1914. 
Great Catherine (1914). 

(This list follows the order of publication. Owing 
to difficulties with the censorship and of obtaining 
suitable companies for production, some of the plays 
were performed in England some time after they had 
appeared in the United States.) 

Besides the above-mentioned plays a few topical 
sketches and occasional pieces should be mentioned: 
"Passion, Poison, and Petrifaction" (1905); "The 
Interlude at the Playhouse" (1907); "The Admi- 
rable Bashville" (1903); "Press Cuttings" (1909); 
"Overruled" (1912); and "The Music Cure" 
(1914). 

The first three and the next four plays are published 
in " Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant " (Brentano) ; 
the next three in " Three Plays for Puritans " (Bren- 
tano) ; " Man and Superman " separately (Bren- 
tano) ; the next three under their own titles 
(Brentano) ; likewise with the next two groups of 
three ; " Androcles and the Lion," " Pygmalion," and 
" Great Catherine " appeared in Everybody's Maga- 



BERNARD SHAW 69 

zine (September and November, 1914, and February, 
1915). "The Admirable Bashville " and "Press 
Cuttings " are published separately (Brentano) ; 
" Overruled " in The English Review (May, 1913). 
The others, with the exception of " The Music Cure," 
appeared respectively in magazines and newspapers 
which to-day are unobtainable, 

Brentano's publish in separate paper editions most 
of the plays above listed. 

References: G. K. Chesterton, "George Bernard 
Shaw" (Lane); Archibald Henderson, "George 
Bernard Shaw, His Life and Works " (Stewart and 
Kidd) ; Holbrook Jackson, " Bernard Shaw, A Study 
and an Appreciation" (Richards); Henry L. 
Mencken, " George Bernard Shaw, His Plays " 
(Luce); Joseph McCabe, "George Bernard Shaw" 
(Kennerley) ; Renee M. Deacon, " Bernard Shaw as 
Artist-Philosopher " (Lane) ; William Archer, " The 
Theatrical World " (Walter Scott, London), " Play- 
making " (Small, Maynard) ; Mario Borsa, " The 
English Stage of To-day" (Lane); Augustin Filon, 
" The English Stage " (Dodd, Mead) ; Ashley Dukes, 
" Modern Dramatists " (Sergei) ; E. E. Hale, Jr., 
"Dramatists of To-day" (Holt); Archibald Hen- 
derson, " European Dramatists " (Stewart and Kidd), 
"The Changing Drama" (Holt); P, P, Howe, 
" Dramatic Portraits " (Kennerley) ; James Huneker, 
" Iconoclasts " (Scribner) ; J, M. Kennedy, " Eng- 
lish Literature, 1880-1905" (Stephen Swift, Lon- 
don); C, E. Montague, "Dramatic Values" (Mac- 
millan) ; D, E, Oliver, " The English Stage " (Ousley, 



70 BERNARD SHAW 

London) ; John Jay Chapman, " Memories and Mile- 
stones " (Moffat, Yard) ; Gilbert Norwood, " Eurip- 
ides and Mr. Bernard Shaw " (St. Catherine Press, 
London) ; H. M. Walbrook, " Nights at the Play " 
(Ham-Smith, London) ; A. B. Walkley, " Drama and 
Life" (Brentano), "Frames of Mind" (Richards, 
London) ; John Palmer, " The Future of the Theater " 
(Bell, London), " The Censor and the Theaters " 
(Kennerley), "George Bernard Shaw: Harlequin or 
Patriot.'' " (Century Co.) ; W. L. George, " Dramatic 
Actualities " (Sidgwick and Jackson, London) ; Cecil 
F. Armstrong, " From Shakespeare to Shaw " (Mills 
and Boon, London) ; Frank Wadleigh Chandler, 
"Aspects of Modern Drama" (Macmillan); Ludwig 
Lewisohn, " The Modern Drama " (Huebsch). — 
Magazines: Independent, vol. lix (p. IO6O) ; Fort- 
nighily, vol. Ixxxv (p. 516); North American, vol. 
clxxx (p. 746) ; Bookman, vol. xxi (p. 428), vol. xxvii 
(p. 474); Poet-Lore, Sept.-Oct., 1909; Arena, vol. 
xxxii (p. 489); Atlantic, vol. ciii (p. 227); Current 
Literature, vol. xxxix (p. 551); Cosmopolitan, vol. xl 
(p. 339) ; Contemporary, vol. cxiii (p. 422) ; Academy, 
vol. Ix (p. 192) ; Edinburgh Review, vol. cci (p. 498) ; 
Hibbert Journal, vol. viii (p. 818) ; Outlook, vol. Ixxxi 
(p. 701); Drama, No. 12. 



CANDIDA 

A mystery in three acts. First performed in 1897. 

" Candida " is a shaft aimed against current con- 
ceptions of what is moral, right, and fitting. It has 
always been accepted as a commonplace that the 
father is the respected head of the family, yet Cramp- 
ton in " You Never Can Tell " shows that all fathers 
are not and should not be such ; " Man and Super- 
man " attempts to prove that in the eternal question 
of sex-mating, it is the woman and not the man who 
gives chase and brings down her prey. In " Candida " 
Shaw shatters ideals about the " sanctity of the 
family," and shows a weak man and a strong man 
— each at first appearing to be the reverse — with a 
woman between them. The woman finally clings to 
the weaker, as he needs her most; not, Shaw implies, 
because she happens to be his wife. 

" Candida " is among its author's best plays. As 
an acting piece it is certainly his best. Not radically 
different from the " well-made play " it takes the old 
conventions and turns them into new channels, and 
promulgates ideas which are for the most part strictly 
germane to the story, sets forth characters with vivid- 
ness, in a highly entertaining way. Shaw had not 
as yet freed himself from those elements of " Sar- 
doodledom " against which he had so vigorously pro- 
tested in his early days as a critic. As will be seen, 

71 



72 BERNARD SHAW 

" Man and Superman " was a great advance stride 
toward technical freedom, while " Getting Married " 
and " Misalliance " at length bridged the gap. 

1. The plays of the past fifty years differ 
strikingly from those of earlier times as regards 
the matter of stage-directions. The Greeks, the 
Latins, and the Elizabethans wrote primarily for 
the simplest of stages, so that the merest sugges- 
tion (Entrances, Exits, and so on) sufficed for the 
manager. There are few indications of " busi- 
ness." Since it has become the custom to issue 
plays in book form, many dramatists feel the need 
of amplifying and expounding. Ibsen was among 
the first to do this, and Shaw has followed in his 
steps. With the development of the drama, which 
has been extraordinarily rapid since Ibsen's day, 
has come the need of commenting upon the more 
complex settings and subtler characters, which are 
comparatively new. In general, the earlier plays 
were simpler, they treated characters more as 
types, than nowadays. With the advent of Ibsen, 
stock actors found that " First Lead," " Villain," 
and " Ingenue " were not sufficient. Therefore Ib- 
sen told something about his characters in stage- 
directions. Not satisfied with this, Shaw told a 
great deal.* He carried the practice almost to an 

* " It is astonishing to me," says Shaw in his preface to 
" Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant," Vol. I, that Ibsen, who 
devotes two years to the production of a three-act play, 



BERNARD SHAW W 

extreme, but he was practically forced to do so, be- 
cause his early plays were either censored or badly 
cast, or were for other reasons not successful on 
the stage. 

Determine, after a careful reading of the stage- 
directions in this play, which among them can be 
utilized by the actor, manager, and stage-carpen- 
ter, and which are for the reader alone. 

Compare the stage-directions of Granville 
Barker in a play like " The Voysey Inheritance " 
or " The Madras House," and of Barrie in 
" The Twelve-pound Look," with those of " Can- 
dida." 

2. Among the most persistent of the many criti- 
cisms urged against Shaw is that the characters 
in his plays are for the most part merely puppets, 
without life and emotions, set in action by a very 
clever thinker and craftsman. In his " Dramatic 
Portraits," P. P. Howe states of the characters 
in " Mrs. Warren's Profession," and makes the 

the extraordinary quality of which depends on a mastery 
of characterization and situation which can only be achieved 
by working out a good deal of the family and personal 
history of the individuals represented, should nevertheless 
give the reading public very little more than the technical 
memorandum required by the carpenter, the gasman, and 
the prompter. Who will deny that the resultant occasional 
mysteriousness of effect, enchanting though it may be, is 
produced at the cost of intellectual obscurity? Ibsen, 
interrogated as to his meaning, replies, 'What I have 
said I have said.' Precisely, but the point is that what 
he hasn't said he hasn't said." 



y4 BERNARD SHAW 

remark applicable to Shaw's characters in general: 
"... They are puppets at the end of wires, and 
the wires are attached to a battery, and Mr. Shaw 
is in charge of the current." Usually, Shaw is so 
much in earnest, so " full of his message," that he 
cannot adopt the aloof attitude as, for instance, 
Galsworthy does — and allow his personages to 
speak and act in accordance with their own 
thoughts, passions, and beliefs. Still, how far 
does Mr. Howe's criticism apply to "Candida".? 
To Lady Cecily Waynfleete in " Captain Brass- 
bound's Conversion".? Dick Dudgeon in "The 
Devil's Disciple".? Are these people human be- 
ings, or are they only puppets? 

3. Shaw spoke of the occasional mysteriousness 
in Ibsen's plays resulting from a lack of proper 
stage-directions. What is the value of Shaw's 
own stage-directions in "Candida".? Especially 
in the latter part of the first act.? Would that 
scene between Marchbanks and Morrell be quite 
intelligible without them? Could the dramatist 
have made it so without them.? Has he failed, 
using the novelist's method in default of dramatic 
dialogue? — What, at the end of the final act, was 
"The secret in the poet's heart"? 

4. During his early and confessedly propagan- 
dist days Bernard Shaw fulminated against the 
conventions of the " well-made " play ; and yet he 
not infrequently made use of those same conven- 



BERNARD SHAW 75 

tions in his own plays. As one critic put it, he 
fell in love with his own medium, and it finally mas- 
tered him. 

In " Candida " determine in what respects the 
play is " well-made." Are the " curtains " effec- 
tive? What of the exposition? Is it clever? 
Obvious? And the development? Compare this 
play, as to its structure, with Sudermann's 
" Magda " and Bjornson's " Leonarda." 

(A still more " old-fashioned " play of Shaw's 
is his first, " Widowers' Houses." Notice the 
" asides," the soliloquy, and the numerous stilted 
speeches in that play.) 



MAN AND SUPERMAN 

A comedy and a philosophy; a play in four acts. 
First performed in 1905. 

We have seen how in the best of Shaw's work up 
to the production of " Man and Superman " the 
thinker and preacher, while eternally trying to assert 
himself, was somehow subordinated to the dramatist. 
In this comedy — and a philosophy — however, the play 
itself is used only as a framework for a thesis. In 
the preface to the popular edition the author wrote: 
" As I have not been sparing of such lighter qualities 
as I could endow the book with for the sake of those 
who ask nothing from a play but agreeable pastime, 
I think it well to affirm plainly that the third act, 
however fantastic its legendary framework may ap- 
pear, is a careful attempt to write a new Book of 
Genesis for the Bible of the Evolutionists. ..." 
Not content with a long prefatory letter, he added a 
seventy-five-page " Revolutionist's Handbook " to his 
190-page play, in order to expound what of his 
philosophy he was unable to crowd into the incidental 
comedy. 

As a brilliant achievement, an amusing collection of 
pamphlets, as a piece of sustained clear thinking, the 
volume is a noteworthy achievement, yet " Man and 
Superman," as a play in the ordinary sense of the 
word, comes near to being spoiled: there is so much 

76 



BERNARD SHAW 77 

dissertation and so vast a sermon, that the play — 
what there is of action and character — occasionally 
appears as an impertinent intrusion. Still, there is 
enough left when it is presented — minus the third act, 
which has never been played with the rest — to allow 
one to see how good it might have been. 

1. In his everlasting protest against the " In- 
corribly romantic " Englishman, Shaw has written 
good plays according to the old dramatic formulas, 
and equally good ones after he threw them aside. 
In his splendid revolt against all that he considers 
false in art and life he has been consistent. Still, 
his contribution has been for the most part a nega- 
tive one. In " Arms and the Man " his message 
was the destruction of the conventional and 
" heroic " soldier ; in " Widowers' Houses " he 
made of Blanche a cold and unsympathetic girl, 
largely because he felt that Pinero and G. R. 
Sims would have made her a little friend of the 
poor. And so, in " Man and Superman " the love- 
scenes are reversed, as it were: the aggressive Ann 
Whitefield pursues the unwilling Jack Tanner. 
The conventional dramatists of all times have pic- 
tured the lover at the feet of his mistress, who is 
usually haughty and distant. Not content with 
telling the mere truth, and unwilling to utter half- 
truths about poverty and war and sex, Shaw has 
stated what appears to his normal eyes as the rule, 
from what seems to the average reader and play- 



78 BERNARD SHAW 

goer a decidedly oblique angle. This he has done 
for the sake of emphasis. 

Shaw's " love-scenes " are highly characteristic 
of his dramatic methods. Take the lovers in 
" Widowers' Houses," those in " Mrs. Warren's 
Profession," " Arms and the Man," " You Never 
Can Tell," " The Doctor's Dilemma," and " Pyg- 
malion " ; compare them with the lovers in Pinero's 
" Iris," Jones's " Michael and His Lost Angel," 
and Edward Sheldon's " Romance." As a rule, 
Shaw is mortally afraid of anything touching 
upon the romantic — yet in " Candida," " The 
Doctor's Dilemma," and " The Shewing-up of 
Blanco Posnet," he indulges in his own peculiar 
way in the universal failing. He never approaches 
the Latin method, where lovers express in words 
and gestures every breath in the whirlwind of pas- 
sion. It should not be too hastily concluded that 
Shaw is averse from the depiction of true passion 
— Mrs. Dubedat in " The Doctor's Dilemma " is 
intended as a deep-feeling woman^ — ^but rather that 
he was dissatisfied with the conventional treatment 
which too often masqueraded as such, and not that 
he was, in the words of Vaughn in his own 
" Fanny's First Play," " psychologically incapable 
of the note of passion." Shaw is too much an 
artist not at least to try to make use of such powers 
as he possesses. 

2. The first act is as good a first act ar Shaw 



BERNARD SHAW 79 

ever wrote: there is little discursiveness, the plot 
is carefully, amusingly, and interestingly, begun. 
But is it quite clear? Is, for instance, the mistake 
as to Violet's position — the scene occupying the 
last few pages of the act — made unmistakably 
plain? The act closes on this scene, and great im- 
portance is assumed as belonging to the episode. 
Technique or no technique, the end of an act is a 
conspicuous place, and what is put there is bound 
to attract attention. 

3. The second act is on the whole good drama, 
concerned for the most part with the Ann-Tanner 
story ; it progresses straight up to the little climax. 
The starting of the motor, visible to the audience, 
is a clever device for thrusting the plot forward. 
Straker is possibly a little puzzling, but he is so 
amusing that we may excuse his dramatic " super- 
fluity." So far, then, so good. 

4f. The third act is never played — except inde- 
pendently, as " Don Juan in Hell " — the reason 
given being that the entire play would prove too 
long for a single representation. But Bernard 
Shaw is always so scrupulous and uncompromising 
in the matter of the presentation of his plays, that 
this excuse must be taken as tantamount to a con- 
fession of failure: the act is practically negligible 
so far as the play itself is concerned. Fortunately, 
there was scarcely any preparation in the two pre- 
ceding acts for this act, nor does the third contain 



80 BERNARD SHAW 

much that concerns the fourth. Only a very few 
minor changes are made for the stage version. 

Read the third act, and try to determine what 
relation it has with the rest of the play. 

5. The last act is good and bad, dramatically. 
In nearly every play of Shaw the dramatic qualities 
should be carefully differentiated from the intellec- 
tual, the didactic, the intrinsically amusing. The 
earlier pages of this fourth act are interesting and 
amusing, but Malone's talk about Ireland properly 
belongs to " John Bull's Other Island." " Man and 
Superman " is only resumed when Tanner and Ann 
take the stage again, and Ann, summoning up all 
her power in order to fulfil her mission in regard 
to the " Life Force," finally captures Tanner. 

Some of the more striking difficulties under 
which the dramatist labored in trying to weld to- 
gether many utterly foreign elements in this play 
have been touched upon in this outline. Can you 
discover others? There is little need to indicate 
the redeeming features of " Man and Superman " : 
the intellectual agility, the wit, the good humor, 
the essential truth of the ideas set forth. These 
are evident, but only because Shaw is so nearly a 
great dramatist is it worth the student's while to 
observe his shortcomings. 



GETTING MARRIED 

A comedy in one scene. First performed in 1908. 

If Bernard Shaw's plays are considered in chrono- 
logical order, from " Widowers' Houses " to " Mis- 
alliance," it will be observed that they evolve, as re- 
gards their technical form, from what is a more or less 
close approximation to the old-fashioned well-made 
play to the loosest sort of conversation play. In 
studying the two plays already outlined, we have seen 
how " Candida " was in many respects " well-made," 
and how " Man and Superman " departed to a great 
extent from formulas. In " Getting Married " a 
radical departure will be observed ; a complete neglect 
of technical canons. The author claims to have re- 
turned to the Greek Unities, but this must be consid- 
ered rather the result of coincidence than of conscious 
effort. 

1. Nowadays it is more difficult to classify plays 
than formerly: there are comedies which end with 
the death of the principal character (Rostand's 
" Cyrano de Bergerac " and Jules Lemaitre's 
" Bertrade "), nondescript pieces in which the hero 
dies and his wife remarries (Shaw's " The Doctor's 
Dilemma"), and others which defy classification 
(AndreyefF's " Anathema " and Wedekind's " Such 

81 



82 BERNARD SHAW 

is Life "). For example, the term " play of ideas " 
may be applied to many of Ibsen's later works, 
yet "The Wild Duck" and " Rosmersholm " 
are much more than this. Tchekoff 's " The Sea- 
gull " is certainly a play of ideas, but it is at the 
same time a comedy of conversation and a tragedy. 
Yet, if we attempt to narrow the term, we may in 
general call most of Brieux's plays, most of 
Hervieu's, all of Paul-Hyacinthe Loyson's,* 
many of Shaw's, and some of Galsworthy's, plays 
of ideas.f It has already been pointed out that 
every good play must be based upon some idea, 
but the particular kind of play to which we now 
refer is that in which the dramatist's prime pur- 
pose is to furnish, discuss, and evolve ideas. In 
this sense, then, " Getting Married " is a play of 
ideas. 

The form is not fixed, yet one of its charac- 
teristics is a good deal of conversation : the easiest 
and, in many cases, most direct method of convey- 
ing ideas on the stage is through the medium of 
dialogue. Yet the moment an audience is re- 
quired to listen to talk, the talk must be super- 
latively interesting or otherwise attractive, for ac- 



* (i ' 



Les Ames ennemies," " L'Evangile du sang," and 
" L'Apotre." (The last-named is translated by Barrett H. 
Clark as "The Apostle," in The Drama League Series.) 

f Brieux's "Damaged Goods" ("Les Avarids"), Her- 
vieu's " La Loi de rhomme," and Galsworthy's " Justice," 
are plays of ideas. 



BERNARD SHAW 83 

tion is necessarily lacking. But Shaw is a con- 
summate dialectician and a master of speech. 
Were it not for this extraordinary cleverness and 
the sheer interest aroused by the discussion, " Get- 
ting Married " would be a very dull pamphlet. 
Nothing occurs ; a group of interesting characters 
sit around and talk. 

2. In the introductory note to the printed edi- 
tion of the play, the author says : " N.B. There 
is a point of some technical interest to be noted 
in this play. The customary division into acts and 
scenes has been disused, and a return made to unity 
of time and place as observed in the ancient Greek 
drama. In ' The Doctor's Dilemma,' there are 
five acts ; the place is altered five times ; and the 
time is spread over an undetermined period of more 
than a year. No doubt the strain on the attention 
of the audience and on the ingenuity of the play- 
wright is much less ; but I find in practice that 
the Greek form is inevitable when drama reaches 
a certain point in poetic and intellectual evolution. 
Its adoption was not, on my part, a deliberate 
display of virtuosity in form, but simply the 
spontaneous falling of a play of ideas into the 
form most suitable to it, which turned out to be 
the classical form. ' Getting Married,' in several 
acts and scenes, with the time spread over a long 
period, would be impossible." 

Notice, however, that Shaw does not claim unity 



84 BERNARD SHAW 

of action, the third of Aristotle's Unities, for the 
very good reason that there is no action to unify. 

5. With the above explanation as a basis, and 
with what of the long preface the reader cares to 
peruse, let him see how the dramatist has managed 
to present his characters and his ideas so as to 
interest his audience. 

First, the theme is of interest to the greater part 
of the audience ; second, a large number and 
variety of characters is introduced ; third, the 
details, the odds and ends of what would be action 
in an ordinary play, are allowed especial promi- 
nence. 

In what other ways does Shaw attract and hold 
the attention? What are his methods for supply- 
ing an equivalent of action, story, suspense, etc.? 

4. Once again, is it pertinent to inquire, What 
is a Play.? (See Introduction to " The Continental 
Drama of To-day.") Critics find it needful to 
modify their definitions, if they are sufficiently 
courageous to make them, so that it might not be 
a great exaggeration to declare that anything 
that " goes " on the stage is a play. 

After all, is there any basis for the assertion 
that because " Getting Married " has no action. 
It is therefore merely a series of dialogues on mar- 
riage? Has not Shaw rather helped to broaden 
the field of drama? 

6. In what respects, if any, is this " comedy " 



BERNARD SHAW 85 

a play, in the accepted conventional sense of the 
term? Are there any resemblances here to a work 
like " The Second Mrs. Tanqueray," or 
"Magda"? 

6. Do you see any reason why Shaw, after writ- 
ing " Getting Married " and " Misalliance," re- 
turned to the more conventional forms in " The 
Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet," " Fanny's First 
Play," and "Pygmalion"? 



THE SHEWING-UP OF BLANCO POSNET 

A play in one act. First produced in 1909- (Cen- 
sored in England.) 

This " crude sermon in melodrama " is one of the 
most pointedly didactic of all Shaw's plays. As there 
is scarcely enough material to warrant its development 
into two or three acts, the author rightly puts it into 
one. Yet as it now stands it is not a highly successful 
one-act play. Sudermann's " Fritzchen " contains but 
a single incident, which is treated in one breath, a.<? 
it were: the audience is present while the tragedy is 
enacted. In Shaw's play, however, the audience sees 
only sections of the play, rather disjointed sections. 
Sudermann was interested primarily in the artisrtic 
effect, Shaw in the demonstration of a psychological 
and religious phenomenon. When it is possible to set 
forth an idea and do it artistically, Shaw is willing to 
be an artist, but when the idea must suffer, Shaw pre- 
fers to be les's an artist and more a preacher. 

1. As the audience for which the dramatist 
originally wrote was unacquainted with the miliev 
— as was Shaw himself — ^he was forced to create 
it: notice the rather pointed conversation among 
the women which occupies the first four pages. 
These speeches acquaint us with the situation, and 

86 



BERNARD SHAW 87 

prepare us for Blanco's entrance (p. 411). Again, 
the stage-directions accomplish much more than 
Blanco's words, because Shaw could more easily 
describe a character of whom he had no first- 
hand knowledge than make him real by means of 
speech and action. 

Possibly the occasional stilted and foreign at- 
mosphere throughout is due to the fact that the 
entire setting and characters are drawn from the 
dramatist's knowledge of Bret Harte and Jack 
London, rather than Blanco Posnet himself and 
Elder Daniels. 

2. On the bottom of page 414 begins a long 
conversation between Blanco and his brother. 
This dialogue is introduced for the purpose of 
making clear something of the lives of the two 
men : the six pages advance the theme while the 
play, as drama, stands still. The artistic unity 
of the piece suffers, while Shaw accomplished his 
end. The action is resumed the moment (p. 4£1) 
Strapper says, " I've got my witness ; and I'll trou- 
ble you not to make a move towards her when she 
comes in to identify you." The woman Blanco ex- 
pects does not come in ; this time it is only Feemy, 
but the audience, seeing Blanco's fear, is curious to 
know the exact reason. He is not afraid of Feemy, 
that is certain. Who, then, is the mysterious 
woman of whom the horse-thief said: "A woman? 
She ain't real: neither is the child." The trial 



88 BERNARD SHAW 

then proceeds. This is a good scene, full of 
amusing and character-revealing incidents. Then 
(p. 433) the action stops, and The Woman enters. 
Up to this point the dramatist has been preparing 
the scene for the statement of his thesis. Blanco, 
having undergone his one great " religious experi- 
ence," now begins to show the results of it. 

The Sheriff.— Where's the child? 

Strapper. — On Pug Johnson's bench in his shed. 
He's making a coffin for it. 

Blanco. — (with a horrible convulsion of the throat, 
frantically) Dead! The little Judas kid! The child 
I gave my life for ! (He breaks into hideous 
laughter.) 

It is dangerous to stop the action of a play, 
especially a one-act play, within a few minutes of 
the end, but in this case the thesis is so interesting 
and the action so relatively unimportant, that the 
audience is likely to forget the play for the idea. 

3. The thesis of this play is so abstract, so 
subtle, that the dramatist must resort to extremes, 
to " get it over." It is more than likely that such 
a man as the hardened horse-thief would have said 
nothing of the revolution which had taken place 
in his soul, had it not been for the entrance of The 
Woman. This was Shaw's method of showing, not 
the experience itself — which would have been im- 
possible — but the result of the experience. But in 



BERNARD SHAW 89 

order to drive home his idea, he felt it was neces- 
sary to show Blanco actually trying, if not to 
reform at least to convince, his companions of the 
genuineness of his temporary conversion. 

No one will deny that to the worst of " bad 
men " there come experiences of this sort, but they 
are rarely external in their manifestation. It is 
not the place of the present volume to criticise the 
ideas of dramatists, except in so far as they influ- 
ence the form of the drama. Still, it may be asked, 
is this play convincing? It is not intended as a 
comedy, although it is amusing, nor is it primarily 
a character study : it is a sermon in play form. 



GRANVILLE BARKER 

H. Granville Barker was born at London in 1877. 
At an early age he became an actor in a provincial com- 
pany. He first appeared on the London stage in 1892. 
Playing under Lewis Waller and Ben Greet, then 
with the Elizabethan Stage Society, and finally with 
Mrs. Campbell, he slowly rose in the theatrical world. 
During many years he produced plays and acted for 
the Stage Society, where he mounted many of Shaw's 
plays for the first time. In 1904, together with J. E. 
Vedrenne, he managed the Court Theater, where he 
made known to theater-goers many new plays by 
Shaw, Hankin, Barrie, Galsworthy, and himself. He 
has continued his managerial activities at the Duke 
of York's Theater, the Savoy — where he has suc- 
ceeded s'ignally in some Shaksperian revivals — the St. 
James's, and the Kingsway. 

Granville Barker is a keen observer of life, pos- 
sessing a remarkable talent for putting his ideas into 
dramatic shape. His best plays are faithful pictures 
of character: "The Voysey Inheritance" is one of 
the best portrayals of middle-class English family 
life of modern times ; " Waste " is a tragedy with an 
essentially timely and interesting theme ; " The 
Madras House " is an acute and penetrating comedy 
of character. Barker is not a devotee of the well- 
made play, for he carefully avoids the well-trodden 

90 



GRANVILLE BARKER 91 

paths of Pinero; in certain plays, " The Madras 
House " especially, his work at first view appears 
amorphous and ineffective. Yet this comedy, formless 
in the conventional sense as it undoubtedly is, could 
not have been forced into the mould of such a play 
as " The Thunderbolt." In " Prunella " and " The 
Harlequinade," both collaborations, and in "At the 
Mitre," Barker has essayed the poetic drama with 
remarkable success. 

PLAYS 

The Weather Hen (in collaboration with Berte 
Thomas, 1899). • 

Performed at the Manhattan Theater, New York 
1900. 
The Marrying of Ann Leete (1902), 
Prunella (in collaboration with Laurence Housman, 
1904). 

Performed at the Little Theater, New York 1913. 
The Voysey Inheritance (1905). 
Waste (1909). 
The Madras House (1910). 
Rococo (1911). 

Besides the above. Barker has adapted Schnitzler's 
" Anatol " (Kennerley) and, in collaboration with 
W. C. E. Wheeler, the same author's " Das Marchen." 
(Not published.) He has also written a dialogue, 
" At the Mitre," which was produced at the Fine Arts 
Theater, Chicago 1913. (Not published.) 

" The Marrying of Ann Leete," " The Voysey In- 
heritance," and " Waste " are published by Kenner- 



92 GRANVILLE BARKER 

ley as " Three Plays by Granville Barker " ; " Pru- 
nella " is published by Duffield ; " The Madras 
House " by Kennerley, " The Weather Hen " and 
" Rococo " and " The Harlequinade " are not pub- 
lished. " The Madras House " is included in " Chief 
Contemporary Dramatists " (Houghton Mifflin). 

References: Ashley Dukes, " Modern Drama- 
tists " (Sergei) ; Archibald Henderson, " European 
Dramatists " (Stewart and Kidd) ; John Palmer," The 
Future of the Theater " (Bell, London) ; Ludwig Lew- 
isohn, " The Modern Drama " (Huebsch) ; William 
Archer, " Playmaking " (Small, Maynard) ; P. P. 
Howe, " The Repertory Theater," and " Dramatic 
Portraits " (Kennerly) ; William Archer and Gran- 
ville Barker, "Schemes and Estimates for a National 
Theater" (Duffield); Frank Wadleigh Chandler, 
" Aspects of Modern Drama " (Macmillan) ; Mario 
Borsa, " The English Stage of To-day " (Lane) ; 
Desmond McCarthy, " The Court Theater " (A. H. 
Bullen) ; Granville Barker, Introductions to " Three 
Plays of Maeterlinck" (Gowansr and Grej'), and his 
own editions of " A Midsummer Night's Dream," 
" Twelfth Night," and " A Winter's Tale " (Sidgwick 
and Jackson). — Magazines: Bookman (London). 
July, 1914; Forum, vol. xliv (p. 159) ; Bookman (New 
York), vol. XXXV (p. 195); Fortnightly, vol. xcv (p. 
60) and vol, c (p. 100); Nation, vol. xci (p. 19), 
vol. xciv (p. 445) ; Harper's Weekly, vol. Ivi (p. 6) : 
North American, vol. cxcv (p. 5720) ; Drama, No. 2. 



THE VOYSEY INHERITANCE 

A play in five acts. First performed in 1905. 

This young dramatist's work is undoubtedly among 
the ablest achievements in the realm of recent British 
drama; its freshness, its cleverness, its deft handling 
of middle-class types, its theme, strike a new note in 
drama. Unlike the didactic plays of Shaw, unlike the 
fantasies of Barrie, or the rigid pieces of Gals- 
worthy, " The Voysey Inheritance " is pure character 
writing, literature in the true dramatic sense. It has 
been only moderately successful, but this is due 
largely to the fact that the audiences were behind 
the dramatist: the play is European, in the larger 
sense of the term. 

1. In the Shaw outlines (pp. 72-4) some at- 
tention was given to the matter of stage-direc- 
tions. In the English theater of to-day there are 
three dramatists who use this method of affording 
their readers a greater insight into the characters 
than could be afforded in actual stage presentation : 
Shaw, Barrie, and Granville Barker. Shaw refused 
to rely upon the actors ; Barrie, who has until re- 
cently refused to allow his plays to be printed, 
felt that without the actors the reader could not 
possibly re-create the necessary atmosphere; 

93 



94 GRANVILLE BARKER 

Barker probably felt that owing to the failure 
(from a practical viewpoint) of most of his plays, 
it was his right to reconstruct the milieu by means 
of words. 

Such directions as the following must be very 
annoying to the average manager: 

. . . Relieved of his coat, Mr. Voysey carries to 
his table the bunch of beautiful roses he is accustomed 
to bring to the office three times a rveeh, and places 
them for a moment only, near the bowl of water there 
ready to receive them, while he takes up his letters. 

A play intended only for the manager would, of 
course, have no reference to the fact that Voysey 
" is accustomed to bring " the flowers " to the 
office three times a week," as this cannot be shown 
on the stage. Such directions are obviously for 
the reader, or for such managers as are willing to 
study the manuscript and endeavor to reproduce 
the atmosphere which the dramatist has striven to 
create. 

The printed play often resembles the novel 
or story in its narrative directions. Turn to the 
opening of the second act of this play. Speaking 
of the dining-room at Chislehurst, the author says : 
" It has the usual red-papered walls (like a reflec- 
tion, they are, of the underdone beef so much con- 
sumed within them),^^ etc. While tKis is distinctly 
outside the province of what can be done by the 



GRANVILLE BARKER 95 

stage carpenter, it should be advantageous to an 
imaginative director. 

Compare the stage-directions of " Man and 
Superman," " The Voysey Inheritance," and " The 
Twelve-pound Look." 

2. This play is a character-comedy, a play of 
ideas, and a conversation piece. There are long 
scenes which, strictly speaking, have little or 
nothing to do with the play itself, but are they 
necessarily superfluous.? What has been the 
dramatist's purpose.? 

Has the same author's " Waste " any superflu- 
ous scenes.? 

3. One of the signs and results of the " com- 
mercialization " of the present-day English and 
American stages is the reduction of the number of 
characters in a play. Each character means an- 
other actor, and another twenty-five to five hun- 
dred dollars a week increase in the pay-roll. This 
is of course not invariably the reason for the 
existence of small casts in many modern plays : 
often the dramatist needs but three, four, five, or 
six characters, and takes pride in the fact that he 
can construct a full-length piece without having 
recourse to the rather facile Shaksperian method 
of bringing in a character every time he thinks 
he needs one. Jules Lemaitre in " The Pardon," 
Hubert Henry Davies in " The Mollusc," and H. 
S. Sheldon in " The Havoc," have written skilful 



96 GRANVILLE BARKER 

and artistic plays with — in the case of the first — 
three, and in the latter, four characters only. 
However, a manager will try his best to cut down 
the cast as much as possible. 

Can this be done to " The Voysey Inheritance"? 
Take the character you consider the least impor- 
tant from the play. How would the play suffer? 
Take two, then three. 

Do you think that Barker required all the char- 
acters he put into this play? If so, in what way? 
That is, did he prefer to paint a picture of life, 
regardless of the artistic arrangement of its com- 
ponent elements, or did he imagine that the more 
characters he introduced the more interesting 
would the play be? Briefly, did he adopt the 
dramatist's viewpoint, or the novelist's? 



STEPHEN PHILLIPS 

Stephen Phillips was born at Somertown, England, 
in 1867. After receiving his primary education at 
Peterborough, he joined F. R. Benson's company, in 
which he acted for some years. For a while he 
adopted the profession of army tutor, then devoted 
himself entirely to the writing of plays and poetry. 
At present he is editor of the Poetry Review. 

Phillips is a phenomenon in the English theater of 
to-day: a poet who has partially succeeded on the 
stage. In a day when the theater public will not 
listen to poetry, he has dared to be poetic, but he has 
likewise had the good sense to mix with his poetry 
a generous infusion of truly dramatic qualities. In 
the words of E. E. Hale, Jr., he " may succeed on 
the stage, but it will be in spite of his poetry and 
not by reason of it." 

PLAYS 

Paolo and Francesca (1899). 

Performed at the New Amsterdam Theater, New 
York 1906. 
Herod (1900). 

Performed at the Lyric Theater, New York 1909. 
Ulysses (1902). 

Performed at the Garden Theater, New York 1902. 
97 



98 STEPHEN PHILLIPS 

The Sin of David (1904). 

Nero (1906). 

Faust (in collaboration with J. Comyns Carr, 1908). 

PiETRo OF Siena (1909). 

The King (1910). 

Nero's Mother (1913). 

The Adversary (1913). 

Harold (1915). 

Besides the above are: "The Last Heir," "The 
Bride of Lammermoor," " No. 6," and " Arma- 
geddon." The first of these has not been published, 
while the other two have not yet been produced. All 
the published plays are issued by Lane. 

References: E. E. Hale, Jr., " Dramatists of To- 
day " (Holt) ; William Archer, " Real Conversations " 
(Heinemann, London) ; Arthur Symons, " Studies in 
Prose and Verse " (Dutton) ; Clayton Hamilton, 
" The Theory of the Theater " (Holt) ; Brander 
Matthews, " The Historical Novel " (Scribner's) ; 
F. W. Chandler, " Aspects of Modern Drama " (Mac- 
millan) ; Ludwig Lewisohn, " The Modern Drama " 
(Heubsch). — Magazines : Atlantic, vol. xcii (p. 120) 
and vol. cii (p. 809) ; Fortnightly, vol. xci (p. 337) ; 
Arena, vol. xxxiii (p. 474) ; North American, vol. 
clxxii (p. 794) ; Bookman, vol. xiii (p. 24) ; Quarterly 
Review, vol. cxcv (p. 486) ; Poet-Lore, vol. xii (p. 
126); Nation, vol. Ixx (p. 361); Westminster, vol. 
dvi (p. 187). 



PAOLO AND FRANCESCA 

A tragedy in four acts. First performed in 1902. 

It is a remarkable fact that although, since the very 
beginnings of drama, plays have been written in 
verse, the legitimacy of the " poetic drama " is still 
called into question. There is, however, some ground 
for such a discussion, yet it is undeniable that if a 
play be good drama and good poetry it is " legiti- 
mate." Perhaps because of the naturalistic tendency 
of the past twenty-five or thirty years, during which 
the English poetic drama has been at its lowest ebb, 
more " closet drama " than acting pieces have been 
written than would otherwise have been the case, 
merely because the form had fallen into disfavor with 
theater-goers. When the great Victorian poets — 
Tennyson, Browning, Swinburne, and Matthew 
Arnold — wrote plays, they had only the vaguest no- 
tion of the exigencies of the stage: "Queen Mary," 
" A Blot in the 'Scutcheon," " Atalanta in Calydon," 
and " Empedocles " are written to appeal rather to 
the ear and the intellect than to the eye and the more 
elemental emotions. These poets were either unaware 
that the dramatic form was totally different from the 
lyric or epic, or they did not care to write plays 
for the stage, preferring the " dramatic poem." For 
the most part they failed to distinguish dramatic 
dialogue from lyric and epic verse. Browning's lines 

09 



100 STEPHEN PHILLIPS 

in " A Blot in the 'Scutcheon " reveal character, but 
they fail to indicate " spiritual action." The re- 
sultant play gives one the impression of reading a 
number of the poet's " Dramatic Monologues," strung 
together upon a thread of story: in other words, he 
gains nothing through casting his thoughts in what 
appears to be play form. 

Shakspere affords us the finest example of dramatic 
dialogue: in the lines he reveals character, creates 
atmosphere, indicates spiritual action, and advances 
the story. The following random quotation from 
" Macbeth " will serve as illustration of the point: 
. . . The raven himself is hoarse 
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan 
Under my battlements. Come, you spirits 
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, 
And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full 
Of direst cruelty ! make thick my blood, 
Stop up the access and passage to remorse, 
That no compunctious visitings of nature 
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between 
The effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts, 
And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers. 
Wherever in your sightless substances 
You wait on nature's mischief ! Come, thick night. 
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell. 
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes. 
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark. 
To cry, "Hold, hold!" 

Enter Macbeth. 

Great Glamis ! worthy Cawdor ! 



STEPHEN PHILLIPS 101 

Greater than both, by the all-hail hereafter ! 

Thy letters have transported me beyond 

This ignorant present, and I feel now 

The future in the instant. 

Stephen Phillips, in " Ulysses," " Herod," and 
" Paolo and Francesca," has shown some gift for 
dramatic dialogue; and as a dramatist, many particu- 
lar scenes from these plays give evidence of a sense 
of the theater and considerable skill in developing a 
plot. Still " Paolo and Francesca," in many ways 
this poet's finest effort, is far from a good play — in any 
sense of the term — chiefly because Phillips the poet 
stands out above Phillips the dramatist. 

1. Most poetic plays are modeled, with certain 
modifications, upon the plays of ancient Greece 
or those of the age of Elizabeth, and Stephen 
Phillips, being an Englishman, follows — even in 
" Ulysses " — Elizabethan models. 

As the story of Paolo and Francesca is well 
known — it appears in Dante's " Divine Comedy " 
— we are prepared for such mystic forebodings 
(technically speaking, " preparation ") as occupy 
the greater part of the brief first act. First, 
Paolo's desire to leave, his brother's anxiety, then 
the scene (pp. 22-6) with Lucrezia, and that im- 
mediately following, with the blind Angela. There 
is no need to leave the audience in doubt as to what 
the story is to be: Angela's words supply the 
necessary warning: 



102 STEPHEN PHILLIPS 

His face was dim: a twilight struggles back. 

I see two lying dead upon a bier — 

Slain suddenly, and in each other's arms. . . . 

. . . He shall be 
Not far to seek: yet perilous to find. 
Unwillingly he comes a wooing: she 
Unwillingly is wooed: yet shall they woo. 
His kiss was on her lips ere she was born. 

And Stephen Phillips, the dramatist, adds the 
stage-direction : " Francesca, in 'passing, pauses 
and offers trinket to Angela, who shudders, letting 
it fall. Exeunt all hut Angela, who remains star- 
ing before her." If there was the least shadow of 
doubt in the mind of the audience as to the truth of 
Angela's words, her action would dispel it. 

2. So far, the story is compact and moving. 
The second act is well developed up to the second 
scene (p. 51), which takes up the plot as it was 
left in the first act. Giovanni is made aware of 
the identity of Francesca's fated lover. Then the 
scene changes — Shakspere's method again — to a 
more or less " comic relief " scene, written in 
prose. This interlude is followed by Paolo's 
soliloquy (pp. 59-61). 

The soliloquy in modern plays is considered to 
be a confession of weakness on the part of the 
dramatist. It had hitherto been used largely as 
a makeshift by the dramatist who was unwilling 
or unable to reveal character or advance his plot 



STEPHEN PHILLIPS 108 

by other and more natural means. Yet in the 
poetic drama it is permissible — that is, if it re- 
veals character, creates atmosphere, or advances 
the story. Obviously, Paolo's speech reveals some 
character, but as a dramatic expedient its inser- 
tion at this critical point must be considered a 
blemish on the play. The point for the dramatist 
was, how to get Paolo to return to Francesca.? 
The struggle goes on in Paolo's mind, and the 
poet has only to give words to the lover's thoughts 
and emotions. But in a play that is not sufficient. 
Just how this end was to be accomplished is not 
our business or intention to determine ; yet the fact 
remains that a monologue is not sufficiently con- 
vincing, especially as the monologue leaves us in 
doubt as to the character's immediate intentions. 
Here is the end of the speech : 

I cannot go ; thrilling from Rimini, 

A tender voice makes all the trumpets mute. 

I cannot go from her: may not return. 

O God ! what is thy will upon me ? Ah ! 

One path there is, a straight path to the dark. 

There, in the ground, I can betray no more, 

And there forever am I pure and cold. 

The means ! No dagger blow, nor violence shown 

Upon my body to distress her eyes. 

Under some potion gently will I die; 

And they that find me dead shall lay me down 

Beautiful as a sleeper at her feet. 



104 STEPHEN PHILLIPS 

3. The break in the middle of Act II was justi- 
fiable because of the contrast it afforded. The 
third act, however, should intensify the plot, draw 
the attention to the central idea, not because of 
a certain law of dramatic technic, but because the 
human mind demands this sort of synthesis. To 
start a story, develop it a little, then stop it, then 
play around it, is not only bad art but bad psy- 
chology: we demand a logical continuation of the 
story when it is once started. In place of this we 
have another contrast scene, which opens the act, 
then Giovanni's entrance (p. 70), and his rather 
unconvincing errand ; the coincidence of his over- 
hearing Paolo, then Paolo's soliloquy (p. 78), and 
finally Giovanni's scene with the messenger (pp. 
80-1). This is all very ragged. Then — Scene S 
— there is a good dramatic scene. Note the 
" atmosphere " lines : 

Francesca. — I cannot sleep, Nita ; I will read here. 

Is it dawn yet? (Nita sets lamp down.) 

Nita. — No, lady: yet I see 

A flushing in the east. 

Francesca. — How still it is! 

Nita. — This is the stillest time of night or day! 

Toward the end of the act, the poet's mistake in 
crowding too many incidents into a small space 
becomes only too apparent ; not only does the 



STEPHEN PHILLIPS 105 

crowding confuse, but it occupies space which 
should be given, we feel, to the love scene. We are 
told, it is true, that the two " have to each other 
moved all night," but how much more telling and 
convincing would have been a longer scene between 
the lovers, such as D'Annunzio gave in his " Fran- 
cesca da Rimini " ! 

4. That admirable love scene which should have 
supported the third act is placed instead in the 
otherwise admirable fourth. 

5. There are lyrical passages throughout, not 
many it is true, which do not contribute to the 
story. Can you pick these out.-* On the other 
hand, there are dramatic lines and passages which 
are peculiarly apt and effective. Among these 
latter are: 

Henceforward let no woman have two sons, (p. 51) 

So still it is that we might almost hear 

The sigh of all the sleepers in the world, (p. 85) 

. . . You then that huddle all together 
Like cattle against thunder — what hath chanced ? 

(p. 92) 

Paolo. — Why did you shiver and turn sudden cold? 
Francesco. — I felt a wind pass over me. (p. HI) 



106 STEPHEN PHILLIPS 

I did not know the dead could have such hair. 
Hide them. They look like children fast asleep. 

(p. 120) 

These are lines that could not be so effective 
were they not spoken by the right person under the 
right circumstances. Find further examples. 



ST. JOHN HANKIN 

St. John Emile Clavering Hankin was born in I860 
at Southampton. His early education was received 
in his native city, but he later attended Malvern Col- 
lege, and then Merton College at Oxford. After his 
graduation in 1890, he went to London, and entered 
the field of journalism. Four years later, he went 
to Calcutta, there pursuing his journalistic career. 
The following year he returned and began writing 
for The Times and Punch. In IPOQ, as a result of 
his neurasthenic condition, and in a fit of depression, 
he drowned himself. 

Hankin is among the number of recent English 
dramatists whose aim it was to give to the stage plays 
of charm and individuality and containing a valuable 
comment on life. He allied himself with the pioneers 
of the Court Theater and the Stage Society, where 
innovations and attempts to break loose from the con- 
ventionalities of the day were freely accepted. Prob- 
ably because of his premature death in 1909, Hankin 
has been a little too highly praised. John Drinkwater 
(in his introduction to the " Dramatic Works ") says: 
" St. John Hankin lived and wrote at the beginning 
of a new movement, and his permanent distinction 
in drama will be rather that of right endeavor and 
the recapture of just instincts than of full-bodied 
achievement . . . that he was one of the few who 
107 



108 ST. JOHN HANKIN 

first sought to bring back sincerity and a fit dignity 
of form to the great art is a distinction of which he 
will not easily be deprived." Hankin was more a 
symptom than a finished product; yet his efforts to 
produce life in an artistic and pleasing framework, 
and his quaint wit, entitle him to a place among the 
less important members of the advance guard. 



PLAYS 

The Two Mr. Wetherbys (1903), 

Performed at the Madison Square Theater, New 
York 1904. 
The Return of the Prodigal (1905). 
The Charity That Began at Home (1906). 
The Cassilis Engagement (1907). 
The Constant Lover (1912). 
The Last of the De Mullins (1908). 
The Burglar Who Failed (1908). 
Thompson (finished by George Calderon). 

Not performed. 

The definitive edition of the " Dramatic Works of 
St. John Hankin, with an Introduction by John 
Drinkwater " is published in three volumes by Kenner- 
ley, " Thompson " is published separately by the 
same publisher. Samuel French publishes cheap 
paper editions of " The Return of the Prodigal," " The 
Cassilis Engagement," " The Charity That Began at 
Home," and " The Two Mr. Wetherbys." 

References: Introduction to the "Dramatic 
Works " ; P. P. Howe, " Dramatic Portraits," " The 



ST. JOHN HANKIN 109 

Repertory Theater " (Kennerley) ; J. M. Kennedy, 
"English Literature, 1880-1905" (Stephen Swift, 
London) ; Charlton Andrews, " The Drama To-day " 
(Lippincott) ; Mario Borsa, " The English Stage of 
To-day " (Lane) ; Desmond McCarthy, " The Court 
Theater " (Sidgwick and Jackson, London) ; Archi- 
bald Henderson, " The Changing Drama " (Holt). — 
Magazines: Fortnightly, vol. Ixxxvi (p. 1055), vol. xc 
(p. 1038) ; Living Age, vol. cclxii (p. 36), vol. cclxxx 
(p. 781) ; Nation, vol. xcvi (p. 315) ; North American, 
vol. cxcvii (p. 78); Forum, vol. xlviii (p. 713). 



THE CASSILIS ENGAGEMENT 

A comedy in four acts. First performed in 1907. 

The influence of Oscar Wilde is evident. Lady 
Remenhara's " Engagements are such troublesome 
things. They sometimes even lead to marriage. But 
we'll hope it won't be as bad as that in this case," is 
decidedly reminiscent. The characters are mostly 
types; still, in most of Hankin's plays there is an 
effort to break away from the mere lay-figures of 
Wilde and infuse into them the breath of life. The 
prodigal in " The Return of the Prodigal," Ethel 
and Mrs. Cassilis in the comedy under discussion, are 
human beings, even if Lady Remenham, Mrs. Bor- 
ridge, and Geoffrey are time-worn types. 

1. Hankin has theorized on the writing of plays, 
and his words possess added interest and value in 
connection with the study of " The Cassilis En- 
gagement." He once said : " I select an episode 
in the life of one of my characters or a group of 
characters, when something of importance to their 
future has to be decided, and I ring up my cur- 
tain. Having shown how it was decided, and why 
it was so decided, I ring it down again." This 
comedy is clear and unified — quite in accordance 
with the dramatist's theory — but it will be well to 
110 



ST. JOHN HANKIN 111 

inquire into the exact methods whereby he at- 
tained the desired end. 

What is the " episode " round which this play 
was built.? Where is it first referred to — that is, 
where is the theme announced.'' Is it made clear 
through a " raisonneur," or is it evolved in action 
or in apparently casual conversation.'' Are we 
asked to interest ourselves in a " character," or a 
" group of characters " ? Which character, and 
which group of characters.'' 

Could the author have advantageously begun his 
play at an earlier or later time than he did? 
That is, was his curtain " rung up " at the most 
interesting and opportune moment of the epi- 
sode? 

How was the " something of importance to their 
future " decided? By what means has the drama- 
tist worked out his stated central idea? 

2. The " curtains " in this play deserve especial 
attention : a crisp and pregnant phrase, an in- 
cident, a mysterious word — each causes the audi- 
ence to await impatiently the opening of the next 
act. Notice with what care, apparently artless, 
the first act is terminated. Mrs. Cassilis's " Marry 
her ! — Nonsense, my dear Margaret," instantly 
attracts our attention and directs our interest to 
the speaker. We wish to know precisely how 
Geoffrey and Ethel are to be " cured," and want 
to see how the (evidently) clever Mrs. Cassilis is 



112 ST. JOHN HANKIN 

to effect the cure. Plot interest, as distinguished 
from character interest, is here introduced. 

In what way is the second act remarkable? The 
third? 

It is as important to close a play Avithout arous- 
ing further interest as to close each of the pre- 
ceding acts in the reverse manner. There should 
be an air of finality which precludes further curi- 
osity ; we should have no definite wish to inquire 
into the future. To lead an audience to expect 
more, after the play is over, is as fatal as to 
deprive it of sufficient curiosity after the first act. 
The dramatist must know where to end his play. 
In a tragedy this particular point is not difficult 
to determine, for a tragedy usually ends in the 
death or failure of the protagonist. For centuries 
comedies have ended with the union of lover and 
sweetheart, who had, during one, two, three, four, 
or five acts, been kept apart more or less skilfully 
by the hand of the dramatist. Of recent years, 
writers, even of comedy, have begun to discard 
the conventional notion that the united lovers mar- 
ried and lived happy ever after, and have sought 
a closer approximation to life. They have come 
to realize that, as Emile Faguet once remarked, 
the marriage is not the end but the beginning of 
trouble. To mention two random instances, 
Maurice Donnay's " Lovers " (" Amants ") and 
Henry Bataille's " Poliche " end with a scene where 



ST. JOHN HANKIN 113 

the lovers separate; they do this because only by 
an amicable breaking-ofF can they be assured of 
true and lasting happiness. Here the dramatists 
have repudiated marriage as the balm for wounded 
hearts. 

Hankin disliked "happy endings." (See his 
article on this subject in the third volume of the 
"Dramatic Works.") Is the ending of "The 
Cassilis Engagement " satisfactory, psychologi- 
cally and artistically.? 

3. Analyze the third act, and determine, so far 
as possible, the following questions : How much 
of the story is carried on in pantomime through 
the stage-directions.? Could, for example, the 
" Bye-play for EtheVs song," etc. (p. 78, French's 
edition, p. 193, Vol. II, " Dramatic Works ") have 
been worked out in dialogue? Is the dumb-show 
more effective than ordinary dialogue would he? 
Is Ethel's change of attitude likely and con- 
vincing.? 

Compare " The Cassilis Engagement " as a 
study in character and technic with the same 
author's " The Return of the Prodigal." 



C. HADDON CHAMBERS 

Charles Haddon Chambers was born at Stanmore, 
New South Wales, in I860. He was educated pri- 
vately and at Sydney. In 1875 he entered the Civil 
Service. Five years later he visited England. In 
1882 he definitely settled there and became a journal- 
ist, writer of stories, and dramatist. 

Chambers is one of the popular playwrights who 
have added little to the theater save a number of amus- 
ing and sentimental comedies. His technic differs 
little from that of Pinero, except that it is not so 
highly developed. Besides writing three or four plays 
of some value as contemporary pictures of manners, 
he has adapted a number of French plays, taking from 
them the flavor of the original and substituting a 
British atmosphere in order to render them acceptable 
to a public, in America as well as in England, which 
is not as yet ready to judge works of art according to 
European standards. 

PLAYS 
One of Them (1886). 
The Open Gate (1887). 

Performed at the Broadway Theater, New York 
1890. 
Captain Swift (1888). 

Performed at the Madison Square Theater, New 
York 1888. 
The Idler (1890). 

Performed at the Lyceum Theater, New York 1890. 
114 



C. HADDON CHAMBERS 115 

The Honourable Herbert (1891). 

The Old Ladv (1892). 

The Pipe of Peace (1892). 

^ Performed at the Lyceum Theater, New York 1 892. 

John-a-Dreams (1894). 

Performed at the Empire Theater, New York 1895. 
The Tyranny of Tears (1899). 

Performed at the Empire Theater, New York 1899- 
The Awakening (1901). 
The Golden Silence (1903). 
Sir Anthony (1906). 
Passers-By (1911). 

Performed at the Criterion Theater, New York 
1911. 

Collaborated in the following: 
Devil Caresfoot (1887). 
The Queen of Manoa (1892). 
The Fatal Card (1894). 

Performed at the Academy of Music, New York 1 895. 
Boys Together (1896). 
The Days of the Duke (1897). 

Chambers has adapted a number of French plays 
and dramatized a few novels. 

" The Idler," " Captain Swift," " The Open Gate," 
and " Sir Anthony," are published by Samuel French ; 
" The Tyranny of Tears " and " The Awakening " by 
Walter H. Baker ; " Passers-By " by Brentano's. 

Reference: Introduction to the Baker edition of 
"The Tyranny of Tears." — Magazines: Bookman, 
vol. xxxiv (p. 242), vol. xxxviii (p. 264); McClure's, 
vol. xlii (p. 51). 



THE TYRANNY OF TEARS 

The play is technically of the Pinero-Jones school; 
still, it has a freshness which is sometimes lacking in 
cleverer and more brilliant plays. There are no sur- 
prises, there is little to astound or arouse to deep 
reflection. Based upon one of those inherent human 
qualities easily recognized by an average audience, it 
pursues its agreeable way through four pleasing acts. 

1. In dealing with a conventional comedy of 
this sort it is fitting that conventional standards 
be applied to it. It will be seen that such plays 
as Elizabeth Baker's " Chains " and certain pieces 
of Granville Barker cannot so easily be measured 
according to older standards, but practically all 
the works of Jones, Pinero, Chambers, Davies, and 
Somerset Maugham, are easy to classify. Nor 
need this imply any detraction from their merits ; 
originality in itself is little enough. While there 
is nothing new under the sun there may be new 
angles of vision, but a dramatist who chooses to 
view life from his new-found angle may be able 
to lay no better claim upon our admiration than 
that he has discovered a new manner. It is in- 
finitely better to write a good play founded upon 
old and accepted formulas than a poor play 
116 



C. HADDON CHAMBERS 117 

upon new and untried ones. The dramatist who 
writes conventional plays has the form ready 
at hand, and may proceed at once to attack the 
matter. A play by Pinero or Jones may almost 
invariably be counted upon to be masterly in form, 
and we may, as Bernard Shaw once said of the 
latter's plays, attack the matter without troubling 
about the manner. 

" The Tyranny of Tears " is a conventional 
comedy of character and sentiment. Determine 
whether the dramatist has wished his audience to 
be more interested in the story, or the characters. 
What foundation is there for your opinion.'' Does 
Chambers intend to write a play showing how a 
man may be tyrannized over by a loving wife, or 
is he rather concerned with a story, into which 
he has allowed an idea, as it were, to wander.'' 

2. Few more striking instances of the basic 
difference between French and English tempera- 
ment and ideas can be found than by compar- 
ing the treatment of a similar theme in this 
play and in Porto-Riche's " Amoureuse." The 
Frenchman is concerned chiefly with the sexual 
side of the marriage, and insists that Etienne is 
forced to remain with his wife because she is still 
physically attractive to him. Chambers calls this 
attraction " tears " and makes of the story a pleas- 
ant and innocuous comedy. Porto-Riche goes 
straight to the heart of the question. In Anglo- 



118 C. HADDON CHAMBERS 

Saxon countries the problem would appear much 
as Chambers has related it, while in Latin lands it 
would more closely resemble Porto-Riche's treat- 
ment. Chambers could not have written " Amou- 
reuse " because he doubtless lacked the insight, and 
would not have written it, even had the censor 
passed it. On the other hand, Porto-Riche would 
not have wasted his time on what he would doubt- 
less consider a prudish and trivial piece of work 
like " The Tyranny of Tears." 

3. In Professor Brander Matthews' "A Study 
of the Drama," the author divides certain parts 
of dialogue, after the manner of the French crit- 
ics, into three kinds: Mots de caractdre. Mots de 
situation, and Mots d'esprit. He says (p. 126): 
" The French, among whom the critical faculty 
is more acutely developed than among other peo- 
ples, have a larger vocabulary of critical terms 
than there is in any other language; and they 
have devised a classification of certain of the ef- 
fects of dialogue which are common to every type 
of comic play. They call a jest which evokes 
laughter a mot, and they make a distinction which 
is not easy to render in English between mots 
d'esprit, mots de situation, and mots de caractere. 
The mot d^esprit is the witticism pure and simple, 
existing for its own sake, and detachable from its 
context — like the remark of one of the characters 
in ' Lady Windermere's Fan ' : * I can resist every- 



C. HADDON CHAMBERS 119 

thing — except temptation.' The mot de situation 
is the phrase which is funny solely because it is 
spoken at that particular moment in the setting 
forth of the story, like the ' What the devil was 
he doing in that galley ? ' which is not laughter- 
provoking in itself and apart from the incident 
calling it forth, but which arouses peals of merri- 
ment in its proper place in Moliere's ' Scapin.' 
And the mot de caractere is the phrase which 
makes us laugh because it is the intense expression, 
at the moment, of the individuality of the person 
who speaks it — like the retort of the wife to her 
sister in the ' Comedy of Errors,' when she has been 
roundly abusing her husband. Luciana satirically 
comments that a man no better than this is no 
great loss to be bewailed. Whereupon Adriana, 
smiling through her tears, returns : ' Ah, but I 
think him better than I say — ' a line which gets its 
laugh, of course, but which lingers in the memory 
as a sudden revelation of the underlying character 
of the speaker." 

There are very few comic pieces which do not 
contain many examples of these three sorts of mot, 
and few other types of drama which fail to include 
mots de situation. These are necessary; while 
mots de caractere are, though they may be inter- 
esting and amusing, and mots d'esprit laughter- 
provoking, more or less in the nature of acces- 
sories. The least necessary of all are the mots 



120 C. HADDON CHAMBERS 

d^esprit: it is a regrettable fact that Oscar Wilde 
occasionally marred scenes in his best comedies 
by introducing too many. The second act of 
" Lady Windermere's Fan," the first part of the 
third act of the same play, together with the first 
act of " A Woman of No Importance," are exam- 
ples of this. 

In the present play find examples of the three 
kinds of mots and determine which are the more 
necessary to the unity of the plot. Are there any 
superfluous mots: phrases, repartees, or epigrams 
which, if omitted, would in no manner mar the 
total effect? 

4. Study the " curtains " throughout. Is the 
rise of the action, the tension in plot, increased, 
crisis by crisis, as it is in Sudermann's " Magda " 
and Pinero's " The Second Mrs. Tanqueray," or 
is it apparently disjointed and sudden as in 
Becque's "The Crows" and Wedekind's "The 
Awakening of Spring "? 



HUBERT HENRY DAVIES 

Hubert Henry Davies was born in 1869- He first 
entered the field of journalism, and pursued his pro- 
fession in the United States for a number of years. 
Since 1899, when his first play, " A Dream of Love," 
was produced, until the present, he has enjoyed 
numerous successes. 

Davies possesses a fastidious sense of form and 
literary style in his comparatively few comedies. He 
is not an innovator, he is content to accept the con- 
ventions as applied to comedies of manners as he 
finds them, and not venture abroad in quest of new 
methods or ifew ideas. He is always pleasantly con- 
ventional, although in his best plays — " The Mollusc," 
" Mrs. Gorringe's Necklace," " Doormats," and 
" Captain Drew on Leave " — there is ever some orig- 
inal treatment of character, some interesting under- 
lying idea. " Doormats " sets forth the idea expressed 
by one of its personages: "... Some people have a 
genius for giving. Others a talent for taking. You 
can't not be whichever kind you are, any more 
than you can change your sex. You and I are amongst 
those who must give. . . . Doormats I always call 
them to myself." " Captain Drew on Leave " is more 
ambitious and conventional; it is the story of a good- 
hearted adventurer who falls in love with a married 
woman : he learns to value true affection, she to return 
131 



122 HUBERT HENRY DAVIES 

to her husband, a stronger and nobler woman. 
Davies comes as something of a relief from the rather 
stiff, if broader, plays of Pinero, and from the occa- 
sionally tiresome efforts to evolve a new style of 
drama. 

PLAYS 

A Dream of Love (1899). 
Fifty Years Ago (1901). 
Cousin Kate (1903). 

Performed, with Ethel Barrymore, at Daly's The- 
ater, New York 1903. 
Mrs. Gorringe's Necklace (1903). 

Performed at the Lyceum Theater, New York 1904. 
Cynthia (1903). 

Performed at the Madison Square Theater, New 
York 1903. 
Captain Drew on Leave (1905). 
The Mollusc (1907). 

Performed at the Garrick Theater, New York 1908. 
Lady Epping's Lawsuit (1908). 
Bevis (1909). 
A Single Man (1910). 

Performed, with John Drew, at the Empire Thea- 
ter, New York 1911. 
Doormats (1912). 
Outcast (1914). 

Performed, with Elsie Ferguson, at the Lyceum 
Theater, New York 1914. 

"Cousin Kate," " Mrs. Gorringe's Necklace," " Cap- 
tain Drew on Leave," " The Mollusc," " Lady 



HUBERT HENRY DAVIES 123 

Epping's Lawsuit," and " A Single Man " are pub- 
lished separately by Walter H. Baker, Boston. 

Reference: P. P. Howe, "Dramatic Portraits" 
(Kennerley). — Magazines: North American, vol. cei 
(p. 85) ; New Republic, vol. i (p. 23) ; Bookman, vol. 
xxxiv (p. 243). 



THE MOLLUSC 

A comedy in three acts. First performed in 1907. 

As a technical feat there are few plays in the realm 
of recent English drama so neatly balanced, so 
economical, as " The Mollusc." It is unquestionably, 
by reason of its dramatic reticence, its charming 
style and its delicately handled theme, Davies's mas- 
terpiece. 

1. The Aristotelian Unities — Time, Place, and 
Action — are here as closely adhered to as in 
Charles Rann Kennedy's " The Servant in the 
House," and a good deal more so than in Shaw's 
" Getting Married." True, the time of the last 
act is one week later, but this is really a minor 
detail. The Place is "Mrs. Baxter's sitting- 
room," the Action, Tom's " education of a mol- 
lusc." The first act shows us the mollusc, the sec- 
ond the struggle between Tom and the mollusc 
and Tom's temporary defeat, the third, his ulti- 
mate victory. Nothing could be clearer or more 
succinctly stated. 

Compare the first act of this play with that of 
" The Second Mrs. Tanqueray." Could Plnero 
have learned anything about constructing a first 
act from Davies? What.? 

124 



HUBERT HENRY DAVIES 125 

2. For the past twenty-five years or so, as has 
been said (p. 95), there is a tendency to lessen the 
number of characters in plays. The point has 
already been discussed, but it may be further re- 
marked that a true artist loves his limitations : that 
Davies took pleasure in restricting himself to the 
use of but four personages, that Lemaitre in " The 
Pardon " enjoyed the game of making only three 
carry the plot of a full-length play. This is vastly 
more difficult than it used to be. Many classical 
plays, from iEschylus to Sheridan, show a striking 
disregard for the time-scheme ; Shakspere was often 
notoriously neglectful in this respect: a character 
might enter a room or a street from nowhere and 
go nowhere, and might return in an impossibly 
short time. While it is of course necessary to ac- 
cept the convention of the foreshortening of time 
on th^ stage, we are unwilling — nowadays at least 
— to accept unmotivated and otherwise impossible 
entrances and exits. Now we require to know 
whence comes a character, how he happens to be 
where he is ; if he leaves, his errand must be clear ; 
if we are given to understand that he will return in 
half an hour, he must not come in two minutes 
later. (This, by the way, is the reason that on the 
stage very few clocks ever run. ) In " The Mol- 
lusc," the comings and goings of each person are 
satisfactorily accounted for. 



126 HUBERT HENRY DAVIES 

Work out the time-scheme of " Macbeth " or 
" Hamlet." 

3. Closely allied with the subject of time is the 
general consideration of character-motivation. 
Why do people behave as they do? In life and on 
the stage? The difference between a conventional 
dramatist and one who has something novel to 
say, is that in the first instance his characters 
act according to set ideas, or according as they 
have acted in other plays. A good dramatist will 
inform us exactly why A behaved as he did under 
the circumstances ; a psychologist, like Fran9ois 
de Curel or Ibsen, will delve still deeper and reveal 
hidden corners of human character from the intui- 
tion which is genius, or from first-hand knowledge. 
Dramatists like Shakspere will merely draw a syn- 
thetic picture of life: the characters are, they be- 
have as they do because they are what they are. 
In " Hamlet," the Prince reveals his thoughts and 
feelings in his speeches and his actions: he merely 
speaks his mind. If Hamlet were a conventional 
sort of man he would have killed his uncle; if 
" Hamlet " the play were a conventional play, the 
Prince would kill the murderer because the facts 
known to Hamlet would be sufficient to motivate 
the revenge. But Shakspere knew Hamlet's mind 
and revealed it to us through the character. 

If we are made to feel that Zoe Blundell's sui- 
cide is natural — that is, if the events which led up 



HUBERT HENRY DAVIES V27 

to it allowed her to do nothing else, she being what 
she was — then " Mid-Channel " is well-motivated ; 
if Cyrano's compliance with Roxane's request that 
he protect her lover is in accordance with Cyrano's 
character, then that act on his part is well mo- 
tivated. / "^ 

Study the motivation in " The Mollusc," in 
Shaw's " Man and Superman," and in Jones's 
" The Liars." 



JOHN GALSWORTHY 

John Galsworthy was born at Coombe, Surrey, in 
1867. He received his education first at Harrow, 
then at Oxford, from which he was graduated in 1889- 
His first intention was to practise law, and in 1890 he 
was called to the bar. He says: " I read in various 
chambers, practised almost not at all, and disliked 
my profession thoroughly." Being in a position to 
do so, he began to travel, and visited a number of 
countries in all parts of the world. Some time later 
he began to turn his attention to writing, and in 1899 
printed his first work, the novel " Jocelyn." This was 
followed by a short novel and a volume of short stories. 
Before the production of his first play he wrote four 
other novels ; some of them — " The Country House " 
and " The Man of Property," for instance — must 
surely take rank among the finest literary achieve- 
ments of the age. Since 1906, the date of " The Silver 
Box," Galsworthy has produced in turn collections of 
essays, stories, novels, plays, and poems. 

Galsworthy is one of the sincerest and most straight- 
forward of writers ; literary, in the best sense of the 
word, clear, simple, and direct, he never fails to im- 
press his readers and his audience with the meaning 
and importance of the play or novel under considera- 
tion. He is humanitarian in the broadest sense of the 
word: he is more than a socialist or a reformer, he is 
a sympathetic artist. In his plays he assumes so fair 
128 



JOHN GALSWORTHY 129 

an attitude toward his characters and his audience 
that he at times almost fails to convince; in his 
dramatic style his reticence is occasionally so great 
that he incurs the danger of under-emphasis. Gals- 
worthy is so sensitive that he perhaps over-estimates 
the sensitiveness of his audience. He is altogether one 
of the finest intellects and dramatic forces of the 
English stage. 

PLAYS 

The Silver Box (1906). 

Performed, with Ethel Barrymore, at the Empire 
Theater, New York 1907. 
Joy (1907). 

Performed by the University of Chicago Dramatic 

Club 1911. 
Strife (1909). 

Performed at the New Theater, New York 1910. 
Justice (1910). 

Performed by the Hull House Players, Chicago 

1911. 
The Pigeon (1912). 

Performed at the Little Theater, New York 1912. 
The Eldest Son (1912). 
The Fugitive (1913). 
The Mob (1914). 

A one-act play, " The Little Dream " (1911), com- 
pletes the list. 

" The Silver Box," " Joy," and " Strife " are pub- 
lished in a single volume by Putnam ; " Justice," " The 
Little Dream," and " The Eldest Son " in " Plays, 



130 JOHN GALSWORTHY 

Second Series " by Scribner's ; " The Pigeon," " The 
Fugitive," and " The Mob," in " Plays, Third Series " 
by Scribner's. " Strife " is included in " Chief Con- 
temporary Dramatists " (Houghton Mifflin). 

References: Anonymous, "John Galsworthy, a 
Sketch of His Life and His Works " (Scribner's) ; 
Ashley Dukes, " Modern Dramatisrts " (Sergei) ; P. P. 
Howe, " The Repertory Theater " (Kennerley) and 
"Dramatic Portraits (Kennerley); Sheila Kaye- 
Smith, " John Galsworthy " (Holt) ; John Palmer, 
" The Future of the Theater " (Bell, London) ; Edwin 
Bjorkman, " Is There Anything New Under the 
Sun?" (Kennerley); Charlton Andrews, "The 
Drama To-day " (Lippincott) ; William Archer, 
" Playmaking " (Small, Maynard) ; Emma Goldman, 
" The Social Significance of the Modern Drama " 
(Badger) ; C. H. Herford, in " Essays and Studies 
by Members of the English Association " (Oxford 
University Press) ; Frank Wadleigh Chandler, " As- 
pects of Modern Drama" (Macmillan); Clayton 
Hamilton, " Studies in Stagecraft " (Holt) ; Archi- 
bald Henderson, " The Changing Drama " (Holt) ; 
Ludwig Lewisohn, " The Modern Drama " (Huebsch). 
— Magazines: Fortnightly, vol. xci (p. 971), vol. 
Ixxxix (p. 627) ; Current Literature, vol. xlviii (p. 
81) ; Harper's Weekly, vol. Ivi (p. 6) ; Outlook, vol. c 
(p. 608) ; Literary Digest, vol. xliv (p. 592) ; Book 
News Monthly, vol. xxx (p. 771) ; The World To-day, 
vol. xxi (p. 995); Review of Reviews, vol. Iviii (p. 
634) ; Bookman, vol. xxxv (p. 203) ; Living Age, vol. 
cclxiv (p. 607) ; Survey, vol. xxiii (p. 705). 



STRIFE 

A drama in three acts. First performed in 1909' 

In his essay, " Some Platitudes Concerning 
Drama " (in " The Inn of Tranquillity "), Galsworthy 
says: " A Drama must be shaped so as to have a spire 
of meaning. Every grouping of life and character has 
its inherent moral ; and the business of the dramatist is 
so to pose the group as to bring that moral poignantly 
to the light of day. Such is the moral that exhales 
from plays like ' Lear/ ' Hamlet/ and ' Macbeth.' " 
As " Strife " is a peculiarly apt illustration of its 
author's theories as set forth in this essay, let us in- 
quire into its structure, its development, and its moral. 

1. " Strife " is an eminentlj fair and just ar- 
rangement of acts, facts, motives, and opinions, 
focusing up to " a spire of meaning," bearing upon 
the struggle between capital and labor. Gals- 
worthy's first care was to set before his audience a 
clear statement, without taking sides with one 
party or the other. He mentions in the essay 
above quoted three courses which are open to the 
dramatist : ( 1 ) to give the public what it wants ; 

(2) to give it what he thinks it ought to have, and 

(3) " to set before the public no cut-and-dried 

131 



132 JOHN GALSWORTHY 

codes, but the phenomena of life and character, 
selected and combined, but not distorted, by the 
dramatist's outlook, set down without fear, favor, 
or prejudice, leaving the public to draw such poor 
moral as nature may afford. This third method 
requires a certain detachment ; it requires a sym- 
pathy with, a love of, and a curiosity as to, things 
for their own sake ; it requires a far view, together 
with patient industry, for no immediately prac- 
tical result." 

2. That " certain detachment " is to be seen 
throughout " Strife." The dramatist's " sympathy 
with . . . things for their own sake " is observed 
in the balance of the scenes. For example, we are 
first made to see the representatives of capital, 
then Harness is introduced, and, a moment later, 
" the men." First the capitalists' side is heard, 
then the workingmen's. Within a few pages of the 
end of the act there is a deadlock between the con- 
tending parties ; then Enid is brought in. Enid 
presents another aspect of the question ; she, the 
daughter of Anthony, the head of the capitalists, 
may be termed the " human element." " We see all 
the distress," she says. " You remember my maid 
Annie, who married Roberts.'* It's so wretched, 
her heart's weak ; since the strike began, she hasn't 
even been getting proper food." In the second act 
Enid is in the Roberts' cottage. Again the au- 
thor's detachment is evident: he does not senti- 



JOHN GALSWORTHY 188 

mentalize upon the workingrnen, any more than he 
over-emphasizes the obduracy of the Board. If he 
feels that some human element is necessary, for the 
sake of truth and dramatic contrast, he allows the 
gentle and very human Enid (even the name is in- 
dicative of her character) to do the sentimentaliz- 
ing. And again Galsworthy the practical drama- 
tist follows the rules of Galsworthy the theorist: 
" The art of writing true dramatic dialogue is an 
austere art, denying itself all license, grudging 
every sentence devoted to the mere machinery of 
the play, suppressing all jokes and epigrams sev- 
ered from character, relying for fun and pathos 
on the fun and tears of life. From start to finish 
good dialogue is hand-made, like good lace ; clear, 
of fine texture, furthering with each thread the 
harmony and strength of a design to which all 
must be subordinated." 

Throughout the first scene of the second act 
the characters of the people are laid bare with 
admirable clear-sightedness and detachment of 
vision. If the poor are in a bad condition, it is 
somewhat the fault of their pride and dogged 
tenacity. Madge Thomas's reply, " What suf- 
fering? . . . Who said there was suffering.'' " 
reveals a person much nearer to actual life than 
would that of a whining and humble woman. 

In brief, then, Galsworthy shows that if the 
rich are hard, they have a modicum of the milk 



184 JOHN GALSWORTHY 

of human kindness, and that if the poor are miser- 
able, they are at times stubborn and haughty. 

3. Further on in the same essay the author re- 
marks : " Now, true dramatic action is what char- 
acters do, at once contrary, as it were, to expecta- 
tion and yet because they have already done other 
things." Galsworthy means here that the drama- 
tist should not invent situations and adhere to a 
fixed plan when he is dealing with units which are 
intended to represent human beings. When, there- 
fore, a character acts " contrary, as it were, to ex- 
pectation," it is because we, the audience, do not 
know their true character. It is by means of unex- 
pected turns and the revelation of motives hitherto 
unknown to the audience, that a dramatist paints 
character: he unrolls it, and the personages de- 
velop. Again this author's wide sympathy with 
life urges him to state that it is pretty diflRcult to 
determine just what a human being mil do next. 

Follow carefully the scenes in which Roberts, 
or any other of the principal characters, appears, 
bearing in mind the remarks above quoted. 

4. In " Strife," what is the " spire of mean- 
ing"? What is the "inherent moral"? Was 
Galsworthy more interested in the moral than the 
characters? Or did he wish merely to exhibit a 
certain " grouping of life and characters "? 



THE PIGEON 

A fantasy in three acts. First performed in 1912. 

In a little poem (" A Prayer ") Galsworthy, the 
poet, asks that he may be given " to understand." All 
of Galsworthy's plays are evidently written by a man 
who wishes to dig beneath the surface, to learn to 
understand and help others to do so. Together with 
this view of life, the author's dramatic technic is in- 
timately bound up. We have already seen how a 
dramatist should hold himself somewhat aloof from 
life in order to see it fairly: " Strife " is the best of 
this dramatist's plays to exemplify his attitude and 
his workmanship. " The Pigeon," " a fantasy in con- 
ception and a realistic play in execution," in Gals- 
worthy's own words, is much less a cold expression 
of facts than " Strife." Its very theme is human 
charity. If one seeks some definite preachment of 
philanthropy — such as Brieux gave in " Les Bien- 
faiteurs " — the play will puzzle: the author shows 
only a " grouping of life and character," and allows 
us to seek out the " inherent moral." At the end, 
Wellwyn is as hopeless as he was at first, the flower- 
girl and her miserable companions are no nearer to a 
solution of the problem than before the curtain rose. 
Had Brieux or Hervieu written the play they would 
undoubtedly have offered some sort of moral, sug- 
gested some remedy; Galsworthy is content with 
136 



1S6 JOHN GALSWORTHY 

affording us some insight into the thoughts and feel- 
ings of three hopeless waifs. 

1. The first act is a work of art: Galsworthy 
never wrote a better act. The tag-end of a scene 
supposed to have passed just before the curtain 
rose, opens it ; then Wellwyn and his daughter are 
briefly introduced in a page or two. There is no 
" exposition " in the conventional sense of the 
word: the characters evolve through the medium 
of dialogue that is " spiritual action." There 'is 
no superfluous word: each syllable counts. This 
is truly " austere art." 

Take another passage from the author's theory : 
" The aim of the dramatist in employing it [nat- 
uralistic technic] is obviously to create such an il- 
lusion of actual life passing on the stage as to 
compel the spectator to pass through an experience 
of his own, to think, and talk, and move with the 
people he sees, thinking, talking, and moving in 
front of him. A false phrase, a single word out 
of tune or time, will destroy that illusion and spoil 
the surface as surely as a stone heaved into a still 
pond shatters the image seen there. . . . It is 
easy enough to reproduce the exact conversation 
and movements of persons in a room ; it is desper- 
ately hard to produce the perfectly natural con- 
versation and movements of those persons, when 
each natural phrase spoken and each natural move- 
ment made has not only to contribute toward the 



JOHN GALSWORTHY 187 

growth and perfection of a drama's soul, but also 
to be a revelation, phrase by phrase, movement by 
movement, of essential traits of character. To put 
it another way, naturalistic art, when alive, indeed 
to be alive at all, is simply the art of manipulating 
a procession of most delicate symbols." 

2. If the writer of "Strife" and "The 
Pigeon " has succeeded — ^and he has — in abiding 
by his professed principles, it might be well to 
look into the validity of these principles. One final 
quotation : " We want no more bastard drama ; 
no more attempts to dress out the simple dignity 
of everyday life in the peacock's feathers of false 
lyricism; no more straw-stuffed heroes or hero- 
ines; no more rabbits and goldfish from the con- 
jurer's pockets, nor any limelight. Let us have 
starlight, moonlight, sunlight, and the light of our 
own self-respects." Galsworthy, in a word, is the 
enemy of all that is false in the theater of " theatri- 
cality." In his plays, there is ever a conscious ef- 
fort to avoid eflTects, " big scenes," conventional 
dialogue and situations. Galsworthy seems afraid 
of a " curtain " ; it has been aptly said of him that 
the " ' curtains ' seemed to hesitate to come down 
on anything that could possibly be mistaken for a 
climax." Yet it should be remembered that Gals- 
worthy, disgusted with the falsity and triviality 
of a vast amount of present-day drama, was forced 
into his austere and reticent attitude. He has at 



188 JOHN GALSWORTHY 

least shown that plays do not of necessity have to 
be built according to time-worn formulas ; he has 
also proved that one of the surest methods of ob- 
taining emphasis is — up to a certain point — to 
under-emphasize. Mrs. Jones's " Oh ! Sir ! " which 
closes " The Silver Box " is an admirable example. 
If Galsworthy is an advocate of reticence he has 
been forced partly by circumstances to be so. 

In " The Pigeon " notice how the " curtains " 
are managed. What elements of the usual " well- 
made play " are observable in these? Compare 
the second act of this play — as to its plot develop- 
ment — with the second act of " Candida." 

3. In his book on " The Future of the Theater " 
John Palmer states: "Their [the characters in 
Galsworthy's plays] merit consists in all the com- 
monplaces they do not utter, in all the obvious 
things they do not do, in all the fine speeches 
they do not make. In ' The Eldest Son ' Freda 
says ' Oh, Bill ! ' and Bill makes the three follow- 
ing speeches: (1) 'Freda!'; (2) 'Good God!'; 
(3) 'By Jove! This is ' Whereupon the cur- 
tain saves him from committing his author any 
further. These are tactics of masterly inactivity. 
The scene is suggested by the players; and the 
audience supplies the emotion. Mr. Galsworthy 
has done nothing, except to suggest very clearly 
that he has avoided doing anything wrong." The 
last sentence here is an evident exaggeration, but 



JOHN GALSWORTHY . 189 

how much of the entire criticism applies to 
" Strife " and " The Pigeon "? Has Galsworthy 
in detaching himself, in his attempt to be scrupu- 
lously exact and fair in his presentation of the 
grouping of life he chose to exhibit, gone too far, 
stood too far aloof, and lost that personal element, 
that touch of humanity, without which no art can 
exist? 

4. The following letter to the writer touching 
upon the play now under consideration, may 
throw some light on the " fantastic " element : 
"... About those dates in ' The Pigeon.' 
Christmas Eve because of Ferrand's remark : ' HE 
is come. Monsieur ! ' and the general tenor of 
Wellwyn's acceptance of every kind of outcast. 
New Year's Day because of Ferrand's remark: 
' 'Appy New Year ! ' which marks the disappear- 
ance of casual charity in favor of Institutionalism, 
of the era of outcasts in favor of the era of re- 
formers. April 1st because of the joke at the end 
on the Humblemen which symbolizes the fact, or 
rather the essence, of the play, that, while Well- 
wyn (representing sympathy and understanding) 
is being ' plucked ' all through the play, he comes 
out and knows he does, on top at the end, as the 
only possible helper of the unhelpable." The 
author maliciously adds : " I hope this is sufficiently 
obscure ! " 



JOHN MASEFIELD 

John Masefield was born at Ledbury, England. At 
the age of fourteen he ran away from home and went 
to sea. For a number of years he wandered from 
land to land, spending part of the time in the United 
States. Returning to England, he devoted his time 
to the writing of poems, novels, stories, and a few 
plays. In 1912 he won the Edmond de Polignac prize 
for his " Everlasting Mercy." Since that time, he 
has enjoyed the success and popularity which has so 
long been denied him. 

Masefield's principal contribution to modern litera- 
ture are his vigorous and original narrative poems — 
" The Everlasting Mercy," " The Widow in the Bye- 
Street," and " Dauber " — in which his sense of the 
tragic and the beautiful find their expression. Some- 
thing of this is observable in his shorter poems, and 
in his novels, especially " The Street of To-day " and 
" Multitude and Solitude," and in his play, " The 
Tragedy of Nan." " Nan " comes as near to true 
tragedy as any English play of recent years. It is a 
play of remarkable power and beauty as regards con- 
ception and style; it is the work of a true poet. The 
author's belief that tragedy should be a vision of the 
heart of life is borne out in " Nan " with pitiless 
cruelty. Masefield's originality precludes to a cer- 
140 



JOHN MASEFIELD 141 

tain extent the question of influences, but it might be 
well to suggest that his friend Synge had something 
to do with his style, and to draw a parallel between 
the love-scene in the second act of " Nan " and that 
in the last act of " The Playboy of the Western 
World." Masefield's other plays, " Mrs. Harrison " 
and " The Campden Wonder," more or less in the 
style of " Nan," and his historical poems, " Philip 
the King " and " The Tragedy of Pompey the Great," 
have only a relative stage value, although they are 
full of striking lines, good scenes, and vigorous poetic 
passages. 



PLAYS 

The Campden Wonder (1907). 
The Tragedy of Nan (1908). 

Performed by the Gaiety Theater Company in 
Boston 1911. 
Mrs. Harrison (1909)- 

The Tragedy of Pompey the Great (1910). 
Philip the King (1914). 

There is besides an adaptation of " The Witch," un- 
published, from the Norwegian of Wiers Jennssen, 
1910. 

References: John Galsworthy, " The Inn of Tran- 
quillity " (Scribner) ; C. E. Montague, " Dramatic 
Values " (Macmillan) ; John Masefield, Preface to 
(new edition of) " Nan." — Magazines: AtheruBum, 
Nov. 13, 1909; Dial, Dec. 16, 1910; Bookman, vol. 
xxxiii (p. 584); Current Literature, vol. lii (p. 710), 



142 JOHN MASEFIELD 

vol. liii (p. 457) ; Survey, vol. xxxi (p. 707) ; Inde- 
pendent, vol. Ixxii (p. 1158), vol. Ixxiii (p. 533); 
Living Age, vol. cclxxiv (p. 778), vol. cclxxx (p. 410) ; 
Atlantic, vol. cxi (p. 489) ; North American, vol. cxcviii 
(p. 375); Yale Review vol. ii (p. 560). 



THE TRAGEDY OF NAN 

A play in three acts. First performed in 1908. 

" Tragedy," says Masefield in a note prefixed to a 
late edition of this play, " at its best is a vision of the 
heart of life. The heart of life can only be laid bare 
in the agony and exaltation of dreadful acts. The 
vision of agony, or spiritual contest, pushed beyond 
the limits of dying personality, is exalting and 
cleansing. It is only by such vision that a multitude 
can be brought to the passionate knowledge of things 
exalting and eternal." " The Tragedy of Nan " is an 
attempt " towards the achieving of that power " which 
" helps the genius of a race to obtain it, though the 
obtaining may be fifty years after the strivers are 
dead." 

1. The above quotation indicates a different 
conception of tragedy from the one usually set 
forth. The exalting and cleansing element is 
Greek ; the " passionate knowledge of things exalt- 
ing and eternal " with the insistence on " dreadful 
acts " as a necessary premise to the laying bare of 
the heart of life is in a manner Masefield's own 
twist to a well-known theory. The story of 
'' QEdipus " is a series of " dreadful acts," but the 
difference lies in Masefield's belief that the audi- 

U3 



144 JOHN MASEFIELD 

ence should see these acts. In " Hamlet " and 
" Macbeth " they are usually relegated to the 
background. Possibly this new idea is a conces- 
sion to the lack of imagination of modern audi- 
ences, who have become too well accustomed to 
realistic plays.'' In any event, this poet insists 
upon showing us the horrible scene where Nan 
forces Jenny to eat the tainted mutton pie. 

What is gained through this procedure? How 
far has the dramatist adhered to his principles in 
this play? 

2. As art is a synthesizing of life, all that is 
unessential must be omitted in order that the 
typical, the characteristic, may be brought into 
emphatic relief. In a play, where the incidents 
are supposed to cover a space of many hours, 
many days, or many years, the incidents Avhich the 
dramatist chooses must be condensed into some- 
thing less than two hours : he cannot waste a word 
or a gesture. This necessitates an acceptance on 
the part of the audience of the convention of 
foreshortening: that is, incidents, psychological 
changes, development of character, occupy much 
less time on the stage than they would in life. An 
hour may be easily assumed to pass in ten min- 
utes ; in a moment a character reaches a decision 
which in life might take him days or months to 
reach ; young men and women fall in love at first 
sight with little or no regard to verisimilitude. 



JOHN MASEFIELD 145 

Needless to say, there must be sufficient motivation 
to account for these sudden changes, or the audi- 
ence will refuse to enter into the dramatist's pact. 
In Shakspere's " Richard III," the Queen, who is 
accompanying her husband's bier to the church, 
is met by Richard, her husband's known murderer, 
is wooed in less than ten minutes — successfully 
wooed. This is too great a strain upon the credu- 
lity of the audience, in spite of the fact that the 
play is obviously melodrama. In Ibsen's " Doll's 
House," Nora's change of mind covers less than 
a week, but Ibsen takes good care to support her 
final act with credible motivation. 

In " Nan " is Dick's change of heart sufficiently 
motivated.'' Notice what reasons the dramatist 
sets forth ; that is his defense, as it were. Still, is 
his change acceptable.'' 

3. The last act in a play is usually the shortest. 
The reason for this is that the climax, which is in 
ninety-nine cases out of a hundred at the end of 
the penultimate act, brings the play to its highest 
pitch of interest and suspense, and there remains 
little to be accomplished in the last. Denouement 
is not so interesting as a rule as development. 
Many plays fail because of an uninteresting or 
anti-climactic final act. It is the business of the 
dramatist to hold over some absorbing revelation, 
or some long-awaited turn of affairs, in order 
that his audience may await with impatience the 



146 JOHN MASEFIELD 

last rise of the curtain. In W. C, De Mille's " The 
Woman," this has been very skilfully accomplished. 

How has Masefield succeeded? His last act is 
the longest in the play. What does he do to make 
it interesting? 

It is well to ask one's self, as the curtain is 
falling on the penultimate act of a play, whether 
there is much more worth waiting for? 



STANLEY HOUGHTON 

Stanley Houghton was born at Ashton-upon-Mersey, 
in 1881. In 1897 he entered his father's office in 
Manchester, where he worked until 1912, as a sales- 
man. The success of the production of " Hindle 
Wakes " that year led him to forsake the security 
of business for the uncertainties of a dramatist's exist- 
ence. In 1913 he went to Paris, fell ill, recovered, 
returned to London in June. On his return to Paris, 
on the way to Venice, he fell ill again. After an 
attack of influenza and appendicitis, in Italy, he was 
brought to Manchester, where, in December, he died. 

At the time of his death Houghton was one of the 
mosrt promising of the younger generation of British 
dramatists. While it is true that " Hindle Wakes " 
is his finest achievement, his other plays — " Inde- 
pendent Means " and " The Younger Generation " 
especially — are by no means negligible. Houghton 
was seeking for liberty of thought, rather than liberty 
of dramatic form, but he never distorted that form 
for the sake of the idea. He had a distinct sense of 
the theater, a remarkable gift for dialogue, and keen 
insight into human character. 

PLAYS 

The Dear Departed (1908). 
Independent Means (1909)- 
147 



148 STANLEY HOUGHTON 

The Master of the House (ipiO). 
The Younger Generation (IQIO). 

Performed in New York 1913. 
Fancy Free (IQH). 
Hindle Wakes (1912). 

Performed in New York 1912, and on tour I9IS. 
Phipps (1912). 

Performed at the Princess Theater, New York 1914. 
The Perfect Cure (1913). 
The Fifth Commandment (1913). 

Performed at the Little Theater, Chicago 1913. 
Trust THE People (1913). 

Not published. 

A number of short and slight plays, unpublished, 
were produced by amateurs. " Marriages in the 
Making " was never produced. 

" Hindle Wakes " is published by Luce, Boston. 
Houghton's collected works, in three volumes, are 
published by Constable, London. " Independent 
Means " and " The Younger Generation " and " Five 
One-act Plays " are published by Samuel French. 

References: Introduction to the collected works; 
John Palmer, " The Future of the Theater " (Bell, 
London). — Magazines: Bookman, vol. xxxvi (p. 641) ; 
MaTichester Playgoer, vol. ii. No. 1 ; Manchester Quar- 
terly, vol. xxxiii (p. 213) ; Living Age, vol. cclxxx (p. 
418) ; McClure's, vol. xl (p. 69). 



HINDLE WAKES 

A play in three acts. First performed in 1912. 

" Hindle Wakes " is one of the few plays of con- 
spicuous merit which have come from the younger 
group of British dramatists. This play is original by 
reason of its theme (the same, by the way, as that 
treated in St. John Ervine's " The Magnanimous 
Lover" and Galsworthy's "The Eldest Son"), its 
telling dialogue, and its construction. The characters 
are well drawn, lifelike, thoroughly human. 

1. It is only by comparison with such plays as 
" Sweet Lavender " that one can appreciate the 
immense advance made in dialogue in this play. 
The early Pinero play was considerably influenced 
by the very stilted style of Robertson and H. J. 
Byron ; still, it purported to be realistic in treat- 
ment. Read the first five pages of " Sweet Lav- 
ender," then the first five of "Hindle Wakes." 
Then read the first five of "The Second Mrs. 
Tanqueray," which is intended to be still closer 
to " real life," and then read five more of the 
Houghton play. Again, read a scene from " The 
Thunderbolt" (Pinero), one of the few frankly 
realistic pictures of English middle-class society 
which Pinero has attempted, and read another 
149 



IflO STANLEY HOUGHTON 

scene from " Hindle Wakes." Pinero cannot 
escape from the shackles of his predecessors ; 
Houghton came to the theater with a fresh out- 
look on life, and few ideas about the " literary " 
style of dialogue. 

Bearing in mind Henry Arthur Jones's remarks 
(pp. 4)2-3) on literature and the stage, determine 
in what respects this play is literature. 

2. " Hindle Wakes," besides being a " slice of 
life " and an interesting story, is a " thesis play." 
This does not mean that the author wrote it solely 
to exploit an idea, or that he was so interested in 
the moral that he neglected any means to make the 
play an interesting spectacle: the idea serves only 
to increase the interest. Up to the very last of 
the play (p. 97, Luce edition) the author's solution 
is not made clear. This was Ibsen's method in the 
" Doll's House," where, up to the middle of the 
last act, Nora's sudden resolution was not hinted 
at. It is likely that if these dramatists had been 
more interested in the propagandist side of their 
work they would doubtless have foreshadowed the 
end earlier in the plaj' : their enthusiasm would 
have led them into argument and discussion far 
before the end. But both Ibsen and Houghton 
allowed their plays to develop naturally up to 
what in a conventional play would have been the 
beginning of the usual end, and then — ^by a sudden 
turn — changed the whole denouement. 



STANLEY HOUGHTON 151 

What indications are there that Houghton was 
less concerned than Ibsen with the idea, as distinct 
from the play as a dramatic entertainment? Does 
Houghton adopt a moral attitude? An immoral 
attitude? 

3. What is the advantage of dividing the first 
act into three scenes? Is there any necessity for 
combining these three parts into one act? Why 
could the author not have made each of these into 
a separate act? Why did he not divide the second 
and third acts into scenes? 

4. In any thesis play there is a danger that 
characters speak a good deal more logically and 
with much more penetration than they would in 
life: the dramatist puts his own arguments into 
their mouths, and consequently distorts them as 
characters. What would ordinarily be the logic 
of their actions he often makes them reason out in 
a way which would be out of the question in any 
other place. The logical explanation of Fanny's 
conduct occurs in the last scene of this play 
(pp. 97-104). Notice the following dialogue. 

Alan. — . . . you'd damage my prospects, and all 
that sort of thing. You can see that, can't you? 

Fanny. — Ay! I can see it now you point it out. 
I hadn't thought of it before. 

Alan. — Then, that isn't why you refused me? 

Fanny. — Sorry to disappoint you, but it's not. 

Alan. — I didn't see what else it could be. 



152 STANLEY HOUGHTON 

Fanny. — Don't kid yourself, my lad! It isn't be- 
cause I'm afraid of spoiling your life that I'm refusing 
you, but because I'm afraid of spoiling mine! That 
didn't occur to you? 

Alan. — It didn't. 

Fanny. — You never thought that anybody else could 
be as selfish as yourself. 

Alan. — I may be very conceited, but I don't see how 
you can hurt yourself by wedding me. You'd come in 
for plenty of brass, anyhow. 

Fanny. — I don't know as money's much to go by 
when it comes to a job of this sort. It's more impor- 
tant to get the right chap. 

Alan. — You like me well enough? 

Fanny. — Suppose it didn't last ? Weddings brought 
about this road have a knack of turning out badly. 
Would you ever forget it was your father bade you 
marry me ? No fear ! You'd bear me a grudge all my 
life for that. 

And again, 

Alan. — But you didn't ever really love me? 

Fanny. — Love you? Good Heavens, of course not! 
Why on earth should I love you? You were just 
some one to have a bit of fun with. You were an 
amusement — a lark. 

Alan (shocked). — Fanny ! Is that all you cared for 
me? 

Fanny. — How much more did you care for me? 

Alan. — But it's not the same. I'm a man. 

Fanny. — You're a man, and I was your little fancy. 



STANLEY HOUGHTON 153 

Well, I'm a woman, and you were my little fancy. 
You wouldn't prevent a woman enjoying herself as 
well as a man, if she takes it into her head? 

Alan. — But do you mean to say that you didn't care 
any more for me than a fellow cares for any girl he 
happens to pick up? 

Fanny. — Yes. Are you shocked? 

Alan. — It's a bit thick; it is really! 

Fanny. — You're a beauty to talk ! 

Alan. — It sounds so jolly immoral. I never thought 
of a girl looking on a chap just like that! I made srure 
you wanted to marry me if you got the chance. . . . 

Is the dramatist forcing his characters (Fanny 
^especially) to give utterance to ideas which they 
would scarcely be able to formulate, merely in 
order that the theme may be clear? 

How far has an author the right to do this ? 



GITHA SOWERBY 

Katherine Githa Sowerby (Mrs. John Kendall), 
daughter of John Sowerby, the artist, was born in 
Newcastle in Northumberland. In this vicinity she 
spent the early years of her life. Her first literary ven- 
tures were short stories for magazines and a number 
of books for children. Her first play, " Rutherford 
and Son," was produced at the Court Theater, in 1912, 
and was followed by a curtain-raiser, " Before Break- 
fast." 

Githa Sowerby 's one important play is among the 
most powerful works of the younger generation. It 
is representative of that group of plays which treats 
of the relation of parents and children — like " The 
Voysey Inheritance," " Hindle Wakes," " The 
Younger Generation," and " Milestones." This first 
attempt * of a young author is the more remarkable 

* In a letter to the author (Sept. 22, 1914) she writes: 
" ' Rutherford and Son ' was originallj^ produced at the 
Court Theater in London for four matinees. It was then 
put up for a run at the Little Theater and moved on to 
the Vaudeville. In December of the same year Mr. Ames 
produced it at the Little Theater, New York, and it has 
since been on at Stockholm and Munich. It has been 
translated into nearly all European languages and should 
have been produced in Paris, St. Petersburg, and various 
other foreign towns about this time, hut the war prevented 
or postponed this. . . . My first efforts were short stories 
for magazines and a number. of books for children, prin- 
154 



GITHA SOWERBY 155 

when it is learned that the writer had practically no 
experience or knowledge of dramatic technic, and en- 
tered the field of drama from that of fiction. 

PLAYS 

Rutherford and Son (1912). 

Performed at the Little Theater, New York 1912. 
Before Breakfast (1912). 

Reference: Clayton Hamilton, "Studies in Stage- 
craft" (Holt). — Magazine: Bookman, vol. xxxvi (p. 
642). 



cipally in verse. ... I don't know what made me think of 
writing a play. I had no experience of the stage and no 
knowledge of plays or players beyond what can be gained 
by seeing plays. But writing both prose and verse was diffi- 
cult and irksome to me, so I began ' Rutherford and 
Son.' I wrote it over a period of two years in my spare 
time as an experiment, with no hope whatever of its being 
produced. I wrote two acts, thought it was no good, and 
threw it aside — then a friend happened to read it, and 
urged me to finish it, which I did, . . ." 



RUTHERFORD AND SON 

A play in three acts. First performed in 1912. 

It is only of late years that the " family drama " 
has received full and adequate treatment in England. 
For many years Pinero and Jones and Wilde were 
content to limit themselves almost exclusively to the 
" drawing-room " play, which they brought to a point 
whence further development seemed impossible. The 
younger dramatists, Galsworthy, Barker, Miss Baker, 
Miss Sowerby, Stanley Houghton, and others, model- 
ing perhaps upon the plays of Ibsen, and cer- 
tainly striving for greater freedom in subject-matter, 
went to the middle and lower classes for their inspira- 
tion, and produced works which differ radically from 
the " Mrs. Tanquerays " and " Mrs. Danes " of the 
former generation. " Rutherford and Son " is one of 
the most striking examples of the new school. It is, 
perhaps, a little too extreme, possibly over-emphasized, 
but its dramatic power is incontestable. 

1. The " pathetic fallacy " in drama is un- 
usually common. It is an easy and very obvious 
dramatic expedient. First acts of tragedies or 
serious plays of any kind often contain forebod- 
ings of the coming crisis. Random examples of 
this are "Macbeth," "Riders to the Sea," and 
156 



GITHA SOWERBY 157 

" Brand." In each of these plays the weather out- 
side serves as a striking background for the action. 

In " Rutherford and Son " the stage-directions 
and the dialogue make us aware of the season : " On 
this particular evening in December," etc. (p. 8), 
and, in the course of the opening scene, such lines 
as " I wonder what it's like here when the sun 
shines ! " and " It doesn't look as if the summer 
ever came here," go far to create an atmosphere 
of gloom. 

In this first act is the creation of atmosphere 
and local color too obvious? How far may a 
dramatist legitimately call in the aid of natural 
phenomena, in order to help the action of his 
play? 

2. The struggle, the clash of character upon 
character which is one of the essentials of drama, 
is introduced in the first act in an unusual fashion. 
As a rule, the struggle is " exposed," or talked 
about, early in the first act, then, later in that act, 
or in the second, the clash actually begins. As a 
matter of fact, the struggle in " Rutherford and 
Son " is so vividly laid before the audience in the 
first few pages, and especially in the scene between 
Mary and young Rutherford, that it may be said 
actually to have begun before the entrance of old 
John Rutherford. So domineering and strong is 
the old man's will, so plain are the results of its 
exercise, that it stands before us, needing for 



158 GITHA SOWERBY 

the time being, no further illustration. Then 
Richard enters (p. 25): 

Ann. — . . . If he hadn't gone to the bank how 
would Rutherfords' ha' gone on? 

John. — . . . Why should it go on? 

Ann (^sharply). — What's that? 

John. — Why didn't he sell the place when he could 
have made a decent profit? 

Ann (scandalized). — Sell Rutherfords'? Just let 
your father hear you. 

John. — I don't care if he does. I never can imagine 
why he hangs on — working his soul out year after 
year. 

Ann (conclusively). — It's his duty. . . . 

John. — Duty — rot! He likes it. He's gone on too 
long. He couldn't stop and rest if he tried. When 
I make a few thousands out of this little idea of mine 
I'm going to have everything I want, and forget all 
about the dirt and the ugliness, the clatter and bang 
of the machinery, the sickening hot smell of the fur- 
naces — all the things I've hated from my soul. 

Already, and before old John Rutherford appears, 
the struggle has begun. 

Compare the beginning of this parents-and- 
children struggle with that in Sudermann's 
" Magda " and Granville Barker's " The Voysey 
Inheritance." 

3. A strike in the background serves to bring 
out the character of the various personages in the 



GITHA SOWERBY 159 

play. Compare the treatment and relative impor- 
tance of the strike in this play and in Galsworthy's 
" Strife." Was Galsworthy interested in the strike 
more as a social phenomenon or only as a means 
of drawing characters, who are set in motion hy 
the strike? What use has Miss Sowerby made of 
the strike? 

4. Study the construction of the second act. In 
what way is the action brought to a climax? Is 
this act in accordance with the formula of the well- 
made play? 

Is the incident of Martin and Janet pertinent 
to the main idea? What is its dramatic reason for 
being? Could it have been omitted without harm- 
ing the play as a whole? 

5. Does young John's speech (p. 30) about 
Moloch seem out of place? That is, does the old- 
fashioned " raisonneur " method of exposing ideas 
harmonize with the decidedly realistic tone? 



ELIZABETH BAKER 

Elizabeth Baker was born in London. Starting her 
life as a cashier, she learned shorthand and typewrit- 
ing and before long became a stenographer. At pres- 
ent she is a private secretary, and writes plays in her 
leisure hours. Her first play — "Beastly Pride," a 
short trifle, was produced at the Croyden Repertory 
Theater, and was so well received that Miss Baker 
was encouraged to write a full-length play. This was 
" Chains," produced first by the Play Actors, then 
at Charles Frohman's Repertory Theater (Duke of 
York's), and has since been seen at most of the reper- 
tory theaters of Great Britain. An adaptation was 
played in New York. " The Price of Thomas Scott " 
was produced by Miss Horniman's Company in Lon- 
don and Manchester in 1913. 

Like Miss Sowerby, Miss Baker was an amateur — 
in the true sense: she wrote plays because she liked 
to write them, with little or no hope of their being 
professionally produced. Both these women have gone 
to everyday life for their material, both have cared 
and dared to write about dull, ordinary people. In 
Miss Baker's case this is especially true. " Chains " 
is the simple picture of the clerk class, pathetic and 
dispassionate. Her sincerity, her simplicity, her 
power of analysis, her penetration, entitle her to a 
160 



ELIZABETH BAKER l6l 

place among the very few writers in England to-day 
whose work is sincere and significant. 

PLAYS 

Beastly Pride (1907). 
Chains (1909). 

Performed, in adapted form, at the Criterion The- 
ater, New York 1913. 
Miss Tassey (1910). 

Cupid in Clapham (1910). * 

Edith (1912). 
The Price of Thomas Scott (1913). 

" Chains " is published by Luce ; " Miss Tassey " by 
Sidgwick and Jackson (London) ; " The Price of 
Thomas Scott " by the same. 

Reference : William Archer, " Playmaking " 
(Small, Maynard). — Magazine: Bookman, vol. xxxvi 
(p. 640), vol. xxxii (p. 136). 



CHAINS 

A play in four acts. First performed in ipop. 

Nothing can make clearer the great gulf between 
the drama of to-day and the drama of yesterday than 
a comparison of a Pinero play with " Chains." Miss 
Baker's quiet unpretentious picture is the direct an- 
tithesis to the color, movement, and intrigue of " The 
Gay Lord Quex." If Pinero was limited, as to technic 
as well as to idea, so is Miss Baker, but each has 
fulfilled an important function: Pinero brought the 
artificial comedy of his predecessors to its height, 
while Miss Baker has broadened the field of dramatic 
endeavor. 

1. In William Archer's " Playmaking " (pp. 
48-9) the author, in speaking of what is dramatic 
and what undramatic, refers to the present play: 

" We have already seen, indeed, that in a cer- 
tain type of play — the broad picture of a social 
phenomenon or environment — it is preferable that 
no attempt should be made to depict a marked 
crisis. There should be just enough story to 
afford a plausible excuse for raising and for lower- 
ing the curtain. . . . As a specimen, and a suc- 
cessful specimen, of this new technic, I may cite 
Miss Elizabeth Baker's very interesting play, 
162 



ELIZABETH BAKER 16S 

* Chains.' There is absolutely no ' story' in it, no 
complication of incidents, not even any emotional 
tension worth speaking of. ... A city clerk, 
oppressed by the deadly monotony and narrowness 
of his life, thinks of going to Australia — and 
doesn't go: that is the sum and substance of the 
action. Also, by way of underplot, a shopgirl, 
oppressed by the deadly monotony and narrowness 
of her life, thinks of escaping it by marrying a 
middle-aged widower — and doesn't do it. If any 
one had told the late Francisque Sarcey or the late 
Clement Scott, that a play could be made out of 
this slender material, which should hold an audi- 
ence absorbed through four acts, and stir them to 
real enthusiasm, these eminent critics would have 
thought him a madman. Yet Miss Baker has 
achieved this feat, by the simple process of sup- 
plementing competent observation with a fair 
share of dramatic instinct." 

Exactly what does the dramatist supply in 
place of the usual dramatic clash ? Does the strug- 
gle take place entirely within the minds of the 
characters ? Is " Chains " in any way a " well- 
made '' play ? How ? 

2^. The Russian dramatist AndreyefF is another 
who believes that external incidents — " action " — 
are not necessary for a play. In his " Letter on 
the Theater " (quoted in the introduction to the 
Scribner volume of translations) he asks the ques- 



164 ELIZABETH BAKER 

tion : " Is action, in the accepted sense of move- 
ments and visible achievements on the stage, neces- 
sary to the theater? " Andreyeff's plays for the 
greater part depict mental and spiritual struggles, 
but Andreyeff makes use of soliloquy and even has 
recourse to the Deus ex machina device of the an- 
cients, by using such characters as " The Being in 
Grey" (in "The Life of Man") to explain the 
thoughts of his characters. Miss Baker, who 
doubtless has no definite theories, however, allows 
her simple and eminently human characters to 
work out their own destiny, without the aid of 
outside explanation. 

Compare the " static " plays, " The Intruder " 
of Maeterlinck and "The Life of Man" of 
Andreyeff, with " Chains." 



JAMES BARRIE 

Sir James Barrie was born at Kirriemuir in I860. 
Receiving his education at Dumfries and Edinburgh 
University, he turned to journalism, pursuing his work 
first at Nottingham and later in London. Although he 
began the writing of novels and sketches' at an early 
age, his plays were written contemporaneously, the 
first appearing in 1891. 

Barrie is a novelist whose best plays show nothing 
of the methods of the novelist; he is more successful 
in this respect than his nearest competitor, Gals- 
worthy. He is a born novelist and a born dramatist, 
the rarest of combinations. That same charm which 
emanates from " Sentimental Tommy " and " The 
Little Minister " has been carried over into " Peter 
Pan " and " What Every Woman Knows." With an 
unerring sense of true and fitting dramatic style, a 
charming sensibility, a knowledge of the devices of 
dramatic technic, Barrie writes plays which are sure 
to outlast the great mass of plays of the day. 

PLAYS 
Becky Sharp (1891). 
Ibsen's Ghost (1891). 
Richard Savage (1891). 
Walker, London (1892). 

Performed at the Herald Square Theater, New 
York 1894. 

165 



166 JAMES BARRIE 

Jane Annie (1893). 

The Professor's Love Story (1894). 

Performed at the Star Theater, New York 1894. 
Tke Little Minister (1897). 

Performed by Maude Adams on tour 1897 and 
later. 
The Wedding Guest (1900). 
Quality Street (1902). 

Performed by Maude Adams on tour 1903. Re- 
vived at Empire Theater, New York 1913. 
The Admirable Crichton (1902). 

Performed, with William Gillette, at the Lyceum 
Theater, New York 1904. 
Little Mary (1903). 

Performed at the Empire Theater, New York 1904. 
Peter Pan (1904). 

Performed by Maude Adams on tour I906 and in 
revival 1913. 
Pantaloon (1905). 

Performed at the Criterion Theater, New York 
1905-6. 
Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire (1905). 

Performed by Ethel Barry more on tour 1905-6. 
Josephine (19O6). 
Punch (1906). 
What Every Woman Knows (19O8). 

Performed by Maude Adams at the Empire Theater, 
New York 1 908 and on tour. 
Old Friends (1910). 
The Twelve-pound Look (191O). 

Performed by Ethel Barry more on tour 1911-2. 



JAMES BARRIE l67 

A Slice of Life (1910). 

Performed by Ethel Barrymore at the Empire The- 
ater, New York 1912. 
Rosalind (1912). 
The Legend of Leonora (1918). 

Performed by Maude Adams on tour 1913-4. 
The, Will (1913). 

Performed in New York 1913. 
"Der Tag," or The Tragic Man (1914). 

" Walker, London " is published by Samuel French; 
" Quality Street " and " The Admirable Crichton " 
by Doran; " The Twelve-pound Look," " Pantaloon," 
" Rosalind," and " The Will " in a volume called 
"Half-Hours," by Scribner; "Der Tag" by same 
publisher. 

(As " The Admirable Crichton," Barrie's best pub- 
lished play, is obtainable only in a $5.00 edition de 
luxe, two of the short plays are here selected for 
study.) 

References: P. P. Howe, "Dramatic Portraits" 
(Kennerley) and " The Repertory Theater " (Ken- 
nerley) ; William Archer, " Playmaking " (Small, 
Maynard) ; Brander Matthews, " A Study of the 
Drama " (Houghton Mifflin) ; A. B. Walkley, 
"Drama and Life" (Brentano). — Magazines: Har- 
per's Weekly, vol. 1 (p. 272) ; Fortnightly, vol. Ixxxv 
(p. 920) ; Critic, vol. xlviii (p. 334) ; Current Litera- 
ture, vol. xl (p. 409), vol. xl (p. 524) ; Forum, vol. xli 
(p. 137); Bookman, vol. xxxii (p. 308), vol. xxxviii 
(p. 263) ; Literary Digest, vol. xlix (p. 643) ; Century, 
vol. Ixxxviii (p. 801). 



PANTALOON 

A play in one act. First performed in 1905. 

This fantasy is very different in spirit from " The 
Twelve-pound Look," although the teehnic, the charm- 
ing stage-directions, the ever-present Barrie charm, 
bring the two into close relation. 

1. The stage-directions are much fuller than 
those in " The Twelve-pound Look." This little 
fairy-tale must have a more elaborate setting, and 
the author spares no pains to make us well ac- 
quainted with all the facts. So full are these direc- 
tions, that the play is practically a story, yet, 
in spite of this, the piece is more charming and 
effective as a stage piece than it would be as a 
short story. There are no irrelevancies. 

Barrie feels so kindly toward his audience that 
he wishes to establish an intimate rapport with 
them. In " Peter Pan," Peter at one place comes 
forward to the public and begs them to applaud. 
(In principle this is the vaudeville method of 
establishing relations between the stage and " the 
house "). In " Pantaloon " Barrie repeats the 
trick. On page 16 Pantaloon says: " But you do 
think me funny, don't you, Fairy? Neither of you 
168 



JAMES BARRIE 169 

can look at me without laughing, can you? Try, 
Boy; try, Fairy. {They try, hut fail. He is 
moved.) Thank you both, thank you kindly. If 
the public only knew how anxiously we listen for 
the laugh they would be less grudging of it." 
These words are, of course, put into the mouth of 
an old actor, but the device is none the less a per- 
sonal touch of the dramatist's, introduced for the 
purpose above referred to. 

2. In the same volume with " Pantaloon " and 
" The Twelve-pound Look " is another one-act 
play, "The Will." This is divided into three 
scenes. Does the technic of this last play differ 
widely from that of the other two — the present 
and the one about to be considered? 



THE TWELVE-POUND LOOK 

A play in one act. First performed in IQIO. 

Perhaps the best way to test the ability of the novel- 
ist who is at the same time a dramatist is to ask 
whether a certain play is better as a drama than it 
would be as a novel or a story. " The Twelve-pound 
Look " might have been a story, but it is assuredly 
better as a play, because the dramatist has by means 
of externals, as a result of his own process of visual- 
ization, made points which could not have been so 
effectively made had the story been cast into narra- 
tive form. This is his justification. This little piece 
is not a novelized story: it is a play. 

1. The question of stage-directions in modem 
plays is an interesting and a curious one. Bernard 
Shaw went far to incorporate long and detailed 
descriptions not only of settings but of states of 
mind ; he added irrelevant suggestions and ex- 
planations, occasionally, it must be admitted, quite 
outside the province of the mere dramatist. 

Until very recently, Barrie has refused to print 
his plays ; one reason for this was that, since they 
were written to be produced, much of the charm 
and atmosphere would be lost if the dialogue were 
reduced to cold type. Finally, however, he has 
170 



JAMES BARRIE 171 

found a way of creating this necessary atmos- 
phere : the stage-directions in his few printed plays 
supply the much-feared deficiency, and it is to be 
doubted whether the imaginative reader loses much 
by not seeing the plays on the stage. Because of 
their whimsical charm, their personal intimacy, and 
literary merit, the stage-directions of Barrie sur- 
pass those of Shaw and Barker. Take, for ex- 
ample, the opening of " The Admirable Crichton " : 

A moment before the curtain rises the Hon. Ernest 
Woolley drives up to the door of Loam House in 
Mayfair. There is a happy smile on his pleasant, 
insignificant face, which presumably means that he is 
thinking of himself. He is too busy over nothing, 
this man about town, to be always thinking of himself, 
but, on the other hand, he almost never thinks of any 
other person. Probably Ernest's great moment is 
when he wakes of a morning and realizes that he 
really is Ernest, for we must all wish to be that which 
is our ideal. We can conceive him springing out of 
bed light-heartedly and waiting for his man to do the 
rest. He is dressed in excellent taste, with just the 
little bit more which shows that he is not without a 
sense of humor: the dandiacal are often saved by 
carrying a smile at the whole thing in their spats, let 
us say. . . . 

Throughout the play now under discussion there 
is a great deal of such intimate detail, but it will 
be noticed that, even if the dramatist describes 



172 JAMES BARRIE 

something which cannot actually be seen on the 
stage, there is no irrelevancy. Every word makes 
for unity — in the reader's mind, if not for the 
spectator's physical eye. Can as much be said, for 
instance, of Shaw's " Getting Married ".? 

2. Barrie is a master of the one-act play-form. 
Does his technic differ radically from that of 
Sudermann in "Fritzchen"? Compare these two, 
then the present play with Shaw's " The Shewing- 
up of Blanco Posnet." 

3. How far is " The Twelve-pound Look " in- 
tended to be realistic? 



JOHN OSWALD FRANCIS 

John Oswald Francis was born in 1882 at Merthyr 
Tydfil, in South Wales. His early education was re- 
ceived in the neighborhood of his native town; after- 
ward he attended the University College of Wales. 
He then taught school: in Paris, in Wales, and, since 
1907, in London. Francis began his literary career 
a few years ago with contributions to The College 
Magazine, and has since " dabbled in journalism " in 
London. " Change " was his first full-length play ; 
it brought its author considerable renown, as it won 
the Welsh Drama Competition in 1912, instituted by 
Lord Howard de Walden. 

Francis is here included first because of the intrinsic 
value of his play, then because he is a true representa- 
tive of the new Welsh movement in drama. In 1914 
Lord Howard de Walden subsidized the Welsh Na- 
tional Drama Company, a repertory theater for plays 
both in Welsh and English. As yet, " Change " is 
the only play that has attracted widespread attention, 
but the movement is, according to all indications, 
thriving.* 

* In a letter to the writer, Francis says: " . . .1 be- 
lieve in the music-hall and have no sympathy with the 
'high-browed' condemnation of the people's joys. It is 
one of my ambitions to write short plays, which, while 
maintaining as high a literary merit as possible, will yet 

173 



174 JOHN OSWALD FRANCIS 

PLAYS 

Change (1912). 

Performed at the Booth Theater, New York 1914. 
The Bake-House (1913). 
The Poacher. 
For France (1914). 

" Change " is published, with an introduction by 
Montrose J. Moses, in the " Drama League Series " 
(Doubleday, Page) ; " The Poacher " is published by 
Sidgwick and Jackson (London). 

Reference: Introduction to "Change." — Maga- 
zines: Bookman, vol. xxxix (p. 62); Review of Re- 
views, vol. li (p. 119). 

appeal to the man in the street. ... I was annoyed by 
some critic who, after ' Change,' called me ' this sad and 
somber realist.' By disposition, I am neither sad nor 
somber, and, on the strength of one play, whose sadness 
was dictated by the theme, it was not fair to envelop me 
in a mantle of perpetual black. When ' Change ' went 
into the repertory for Wales, I wrote ' The Poacher ' in 
order, amongst other things, to correct the notion that I 
did not like a bit of fun as much as anybody else." 



CHANGE 

A play in four acts. First performed in 191S. 

" Change " was first produced in London by the 
Incorporated Stage Society in 1913, but when, a few 
months later, it was performed at Cardiff by the 
Welsh National Drama Company, it was, in the 
author's words, the first " performance in Wales of 
a Welsh play by a professional repertory company in 
the history of the country." As Mr. Moses remarks in 
his preface to the American edition of the play, 
" Change " shows " a realization of all that is signifi- 
cant in the modern spirit settling over Wales." As a 
play it is intrinsically significant as regards technic 
and idea. 

1. The very title of this play puts it in the 
same class with " Magda," " Milestones," " Ruth- 
erford and Son," " The Younger Generation," 
and the other plays which are based upon the 
struggle between generation and generation, 
between what is new and what is old and estab- 
lished. 

What is the " change " referred to in the title, 
and in what way has the dramatist made use of 
his material.'' 

176 



176 JOHN OSWALD FRANCIS 

2. This play serves as an excellent illustration 
of the fact that time-worn stage conventions can 
be used in such a way as not to seem out of place 
or insincere. It is only when insincere construc- 
tion and insincere characters are placed in a thor- 
oughly conventional framework that conventional 
tricks and devices are offensive. Attention is 
called in the introduction (p. xv) to the mob 
scene outside, toward the end of the third act. 
This is unquestionably a trick, but so well is it 
handled, and so earnest is the author, that the 
scene somehow is not immediately reminis- 
cent. 

3. Many — it is safe to say, most — plays nar- 
row down in the penultimate act to one, two, or 
three characters : one by one the subordinate char- 
acters are eliminated, so that when the climax 
comes, it can be all the more dramatic, because it 
rests on that " spire of meaning " of which Gals- 
worthy speaks (p. 131). The reason for this is 
psychological: the law of attention demands that 
we fix our interest and sympathy on one object, 
for the presence of any more than one tends to 
scatter the attention. It is impossible to sym- 
pathize unless we can see individuals, or better still 
one individual, struggling with opponents. For 
two acts, " Change " has interested because of the 
theme, because of the numerous and varied char- 
acters, but rarely has our sympathy been aroused 



JOHN OSWALD FRANCIS 177 

for persons; in order to introduce the human ele- 
ment, Francis drove home his theme by showing us 
the mother and Lizzie Ann. No amount of mere 
talk could so move us as this last scene of the 
third act: 

Gwen. — He's climbing the wall by Roberts's house. 
He's shouting to them. Lewis! Lewis! Go down! 
(^She bends forward, and gives a frightened shriek.) 
There's our Gwilym. Look ! He's on the wall, trying 
to pull Lewis away 

Lizzie Ann. — There's four soldiers. O Dduw! 

Don't look! Don't look! They're going to shoot! 

(She drags Gwen away from the window. There 

is a sound of firing without, followed by deep silence. 

In a whisper.) 
They've done it! 

Gwen (pointing to the window). — Look! 

Lizzie Ann (shuddering). — I can't. 

Gwen. — You must. 

Lizzie Ann. — I can't. 

(Gwen wavers a moment, and then forces herself 

toward the window and looks out.) 

Gwen. — They're carrying some one into Roberts's 
house. It's Lewis. No, there's Lewis ! (She bends 
forward; then in a harsh voice) Lizzie Ann, come 
here ! 

(Lizzie Ann goes quickly to her, and looks out. 

She starts and turns away, sobbing out, " Oh, 

machgen bach-i! ") 

Gwen. — Is it Gwilym? 



178 JOHN OSWALD FRANCIS 

Lizzie Ann. — Yes. Gwilym! 

(For a moment Gwen stands swaying to and fro. 
Then, with a cry of anguish, she falls prostrate on 
the floor.) 

Another proof that dramatists must show human 
emotions in order to make their audiences feel. 
Without this human element, it is doubtful whether 
" Change " would be in any way a successful stage 
play. 

4. Compare the treatment of strikes in 
" Change," " Strife," and " Rutherford and Son." 



THE IRISH DRAMA 



WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS 

William Butler Yeats was born in Dublin in 1865. 
He is the son of John B. Yeats, the artist. His early 
education was' received in his native city and in Lon- 
don. Early in his career he identified himself with 
numerous attempts to revive the legends and litera- 
ture of ancient Ireland; in this connection his most 
important activity was the foundation, together with 
Lady Gregory, Edward Martyn, and George Moore, 
of The Irish Literary Theater. Yeats has spent 
many years in collecting folk-lore ; this' he has utilized 
in many of his plays and collected into volumes of 
prose essays. Outside his dramatic work, essays and 
collections of legendary material, are his poems, un- 
doubtedly that part of his total output by which he 
will be longest remembered: "Poems," first and sec- 
ond series, " The Wanderings of Oisin," " The Secret 
Rose," and " The Wind Among the Reeds." 

" The future will look back to Mr. Yeats as to a 
landmark in the literary hisrtory of Ireland, both be- 
cause of his artistic achievement and because he has 
been a leader in a remarkable movement. Through 
his poetry the Celtic spirit moves like a fresh wind," 
says H. S. Krans, in his " William Butler Yeats." 
Yeats brought to the theater great poetic gifts, he 
went far to arouse interest in the past glory of his 
country; as propagandist, as manager, as lecturer, he 
181 



182 WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS 

has done more than any other, with the possible ex- 
ception of Lady Gregory, to create a new and living 
art for Ireland, but he cannot be accounted a great 
dramatist. His vision is too limited, his genius too 
delicate, his temperament too subjective, to allow him 
to stand aloof and let his characters work out their 
destiny as human beings. 

PLAYS 

The Land of Heart's Desire (1894). 

Performed at Wallack's Theater, New York IQOl. 
The Countess Cathleen (1899). 

Performed at Madison Square Garden, New York 
1905. 
DiARMUiD AND Grania (in Collaboration with George 

Moore, 1901). 
Kathleen ni Houlihan (1902). 

Performed at the Hudson Theater, New York 1905. 
A Pot of Broth (1902). 
The Hour-Glass (1903). 

Performed at the Hudson Theater, New York 1904. 
The King's Threshold (1903). 
The Shadowy Waters (1904). 
On Baile's Strand (1904). 

Performed at the Little Theater, Chicago 1911. 
Deirdre (1906). 
The Unicorn from the Stars (in collaboration with 

Lady Gregory, 1907). 
The Golden Helmet (1908). 

There are a great many editions of Yeats's plays, 
owing to the fact that the poet has in some cases 



WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS 183 

revised and rewritten certain of them six or seven 
times. The largest collected edition is that published 
by A. H. Bullen, at Stratford-on-Avon : " The Col- 
lected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler 
Yeats " (in eight volumes, Macmillans publish a 
volume of his poetic plays in " Poetical Works," Vol. 
II). " The Land of Heart's Desire " is also published 
separately by Mosher (Portland, Maine). " Kathleen 
ni Houlihan," "The Hour-Glass," and "A Pot of 
Broth" are published in a single volume by Mac- 
millan ; " Kathleen ni Houlihan," " The Hour-Glass," 
and " The Unicorn from the Stars " are also published 
in a volume by the same ; also " The Golden Helmet," 
in a volume with poems. " Diarmuid and Grania " 
has not been published. 

" The Unicorn from the Stars " is a rewritten ver- 
sion of an earlier play, " Where There is Nothing," 
which is now out of print. " The Hour-Glass " is in 
"Chief Contemporary Dramatists" (Houghton 
Mifflin). 

References: Horatio Sheaf e Krans, "William 
Butler Yeats and the Irish Literary Re- 
vival" (Doubleday, Page); Lady Gregory, "Our 
Irish Theater" (Putnam); Maurice Bourgeois, 
"John Millington Synge and the Irish Dramatic 
Movement" (Macmillan) ; Cornelius Weygandt, 
"Irish Plays and Playwrights" (Houghton Mifflin); 
Frank Wadleigh Chandler, "Aspects of Modern 
Drama " (Macmillan) ; B. Russell Herts, " Deprecia- 
tions " (Boni, New York); Clayton Hamilton, 
" Studies in Stagecraft " (Holt) ; Ludwig Lewisohn, 



184 WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS 

" The Modern Drama " (Huebsch) ; George Moore, 
" Hail and Farewell " (Appleton) ; James Huneker, 
" The Pathos of Distance " (Scribner) ; W. B. Yeats, 
" Ideas of Good and Evil " (Macmillan) ; Alan Wade, 
" Bibliography of Yeats " (" Collected Works," 
Bullen, Vol. VIII) ; L. Paul-Dubois, " Contemporary 
Ireland " (Maunsel) ; anonymous, " The New Irish 
Drama," a reading list (Drama League of America). 
— Magazines: Poet-Lore, vol. xv (p, 83); Critic, vol. 
xliv (p. 26) ; Collier's, vol. xlviii (p. 15) ; Living Age, 
vol. cclxix (p. 655) ; Fortnightly, vol. xci (p. 342) ; 
Harper's Weekly, vol. xlviii (p. 291 ) ; BooTc News 
Monthly, vol. xxii (p. 1024); Westminster Review, 
vol. clxxvi (p. 1); North American, vol. clxxv (p. 
473) ; Quarterly, vol. ccxv (p. 219). 



THE COUNTESS CATHLEEN 

A play in five scenes. First performed in 1899. 

It has already been stated that Yeats's greatest con- 
tribution to the movement he went so far to establish 
was not the plays he wrote for it, but his unfailing 
encouragement, his managerial ability, his propagand- 
ist endeavors. Yet his plays deserve consideration, as 
they are attempts at a new style of drama, not as to 
form but as to treatment of subject-matter, and lit- 
erary style. This, of course, has very little to do with 
dramatic technic, but the study of these accessories is 
well worth while. In his preface to the second vol- 
ume of the " Poetical Works " he says: " I have chosen 
all of my themes from Irish legend or Irish history, 
and my friends have made joyous, extravagant, and, 
as I am certain, distinguished comedy out of the com- 
mon life of the villages, or out of a fantasy trained 
by the contemplation of that life and of the tales 
told by its firesides. This theater cannot but be more 
interesting to people of other races because it is Irish, 
and, therefore, to some extent, stirred by emotions 
and thoughts not hitherto expressed in dramatic 
form. ..." 

1. There is a mystical atmosphere in " The 
Countess Cathleen " which Is comparable with the 
earlier plays of Maeterlinck. In what respects is 
185 



186 WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS 

this play similar in technic to " The Intruder " 
or " Pelleas and Melisande "? Are there any in- 
dications that Yeats was influenced by the Belgian? 

2. In a note to his " Deirdre " (in the " Col- 
lected Works ") Yeats says: " The principal diffi- 
culty with the form of dramatic literature I have 
adopted is that, unlike the loose Elizabethan form, 
it continually forces one by its rigor of logic away 
from one's capacities, experiences, and desires, 
until, if one have not patience to wait till it comes, 
there is rhetoric and logic and dry circumstance 
where there should be life." In this play are there 
evidences of this struggle of which the poet 
speaks? Where and of what sort are they? Does 
Yeats fall into conventional grooves? 

Is there any special reason why the play should 
be divided into five scenes? Are there well-defined 
divisions in the play: exposition, development, 
climax, etc.? 

3. As in Stephen Phillips's " Paolo and Fran- 
cesca," there are many lyrical passages and short 
speeches which are of independent value and strik- 
ing beauty, apart from the dramatic context. Is 

" You shall at last dry like dry leaves, and hang 
Nailed like dead vermin to the doors of God," 

more effective because it is spoken by Maire in a 
certain place in this play, than it would be if it 



WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS 187 

stood alone or as part of an epic ? Are the superb 
lines, 

" The years like great black oxen tread the world, 
And God the herdsman goads them on behind, 
And I am broken by their passing feet." 

epic or dramatic ? 

4. Read Yeats's " Kathleen ni Houlihan," a 
prose play which is eminently effective on the 
stage. Compare it carefully with " The Countess 
Cathleen." In what respects do the two plays 
differ? Why is the prose piece more " theatrical "? 
In " Kathleen ni Houlihan " are there any pas- 
sages, as there are in " The Countess Cathleen," 
which might stand alone by reason of their in- 
trinsic beauty? 

5. Notice the stage-directions. They are sim- 
ple, but they indicate the poet's sense of action and 
dramatic effect. The play closes with : " A sound 
of far-off horns seems to come from the heart of 
the Light. The vision melts away, and the forms 
of the kneeling PEASANTS appear faintly-in the 
darkness J*^ Often a dramatist throws out a hint, 
which the stage-manager is intended to act upon, 
filling in the necessary " business." How much 
leeway has the manager in the present play? 



JOHN MILLINGTON SYNGE 

Edmund John Millington Synge was born at New- 
town Little, in the vicinity of Dublin, in 1871. Not 
much is known of his early life, except that he lived 
at home until he was nearly twenty, that he entered 
Trinity College, Dublin, in 1888, and was graduated 
four years later. His predilection was for languages 
and music, although he was ever an ardent nature- 
lover. For many years he wandered about the Conti- 
nent, writing a little and allowing impressions of men 
and nature to gather in his receptive mind. He went 
first to Germany, with the intention of pursuing his 
musical studies; after a year, he abandoned the idea 
and went to Paris, in order to do literary criticism. 
Still uncertain of his true calling, he made various 
though unsuccessful attempts to write poelr}^ and 
essays. He did not " find himself " until he was dis- 
covered by another young enthusiast from Ireland, W. 
B. Yeats, who, in 1898, induced him to leave Paris 
and return to Ireland and devote himself to a study of 
the people, and write real Irish plays for the recently- 
founded Irish Theater. In the Aran Islands, in 
Wicklow and Kerry and Connemara, Synge found the 
necessary material and inspiration for his plays. He 
died of cancer at Dublin in 1909. 

Synge was quiet, introspective, reticent, yet he al- 
lowed his true temperament — with all its wild vagari- 

188 



JOHN MILLINGTON SYNGE 189 

ous longings, its furious exultations — to find expression 
in his plays. " He loves/' says Yeats, " all that has 
edge, all that is salt in the mouth, all that is rough 
to the hand, all that heightens the emotions by contest, 
all that stings into life the sense of tragedy. . . . 
The food of the spiritual-minded is sweet, an Indian 
scripture says, but passionate minds love bitter food." 
His interest was in humanity, in everyday life, espe- 
cially in those manifestations of primitive life which 
he knew so well how to seek out and use to advantage. 

PLAYS 

The Shadow of the Glen (1903). 

Performed by the Irish Players on tour 1912-3. 
Riders to the Sea (1904). 

Performed by the Irish Players on tour 1912-3. 
The Well of the Saints (1905). 

Performed by the Irish Players on tour 1912-3. 
The Playboy of the Western World (1907). 

Performed by the Irish Players on tour 1912-3. 
The Tinker's Wedding (1909). 
Deirdre of the Sorrows (1910). 

Performed by the Chicago Musical College 1913. 

" The Works of John M. Synge," a collected edi- 
tion in four volumes, is published by Luce. Cheap 
editions of all the plays are published separately by 
the same publisher. " Riders to the Sea " is included 
in " Chief Contemporary Dramatists " (Houghton 
Mifflin). Maunsel publishes the complete plays in one 
volume. 

References: Francis Bickley, "J. M. Synge and 



190 JOHN MILLINGTON SYNGE 

the Irish Dramatic Movement" (Houghton Mifflin); 
Maurice Bourgeois, " John Millington Synge and the 
Irish Theater " (Macmillan) ; C. E. Montague, 
" Dramatic Values " (Macmillan) ; P. P. Howe, 
" J. M. Synge " (Kennerley) ; Cornelius Weygandt, 
" Irish Plays and Playwrights " (Houghton Mif- 
flin) ; George Moore, " Hail and Farewell " (Ap- 
pleton) ; Lady Gregory, " Our Irish Theater " (Put- 
nam) ; W. B. Yeats, " The Cutting of an Agate " 
(Macmillan) ; L. Paul-Dubois, " Contemporary 
Ireland," (Maunsel) ; Ludwig Lewisohn, "The 
Modern Drama" (Huebsch); Clayton Hamilton, 
" Studies' in Stagecraft " (Holt) ; Darrell Figgis, 
" Studies and Appreciations " (Dutton) ; William 
Archer, " Playmaking " (Small, Maynard) ; John 
Masefield, "Dictionary of National Biography"; 
Mario Borsa, " The English Stage of To-day " 
(Lane) ; Frank Wadleigh Chandler, " Aspects 
of Modern Drama" (Macmillan); James Huneker, 
" The Pathos of Distance " (Scribner) ; John M. 
Synge, prefaces' to " The Playboy of the Western 
World " and " The Tinker's Wedding " ; " The Aran 
Islands " and " In Kerry and Wicklow " (Luce). — 
Magazines: Contemporary Review, vol. xcix (p. 470) ; 
Dial, vol. 1 (p. 37), vol. liv (p. 233) ; Living Age, vol. 
cclxix (p. 163), vol. cclxxx (p. 777); Nation, vol. 
xciii (p. 376), vol. xcv (p. 608); Yale Review, vol. i 
(p. 192), vol. ii (p. 767); Forum, vol. xlvii (p. 55); 
Current Literature, vol. liii (p. 695). 



RIDERS TO THE SEA 

A play in one act. First performed in 1904. 

This little drama, while it has none of the uproari- 
ous " romping " of " The Playboy," is still an unmis- 
takable indication of Synge's keen enthusiasm for all 
that concerns human life. If he can take pleasure in 
the vitality and animal spirits of a Christy Mahon, he 
can likewise savor the dumb tragedy of a Maurya. 
The play is a picture, compressed and synthesized, 
of the helples'sness of a mother in her hopeless strug- 
gle with the sea. 

1. Synge's perfect mastery of words is one of 
his greatest assets. Like Shakspere, he can at once 
supply environment, create atmosphere, paint 
word-pictures. That sharp contrast between the 
homely and everyday in life and the gruesomeness 
of death is clearly drawn in " Riders to the Sea." 
Bartley says : " Where is the bit of new rope, 
Cathleen, was bought in Conncmara? " and Cath- 
leen replies : " Give it to him, Nora, it's on a nail 
by the white boards. I hung it up this morning, 
for the pig with the black feet was eating it." 
This is what Yeats means when he speaks of 
Synge's loving all that has edge. 
191 



192 JOHN MILLINGTON SYNGE 

2. In " Vale," the second volume of his " Hail 
and Farewell," George Moore wrote of " Riders 
to the Sea " : " . . . when I heard this one-act 
play, it seemed very little more than the contents 
of Synge's notebook, an experiment in language 
rather than a work of art, a preparatory essay ; 
he seemed to me to have contented himself with re- 
lating a painful rather than a dramatic story, his 
preoccupation being to discover a style, a vehicle 
of expression. ..." And the incident is pain- 
ful rather than dramatic, for the struggle must 
be felt in the background, it cannot be seen and 
participated in by the audience. Consequently, 
we might almost feel that the struggle here de- 
picted was so hopeless as to leave no room for 
anything but dumb submission. A true tragedy 
ought to give the hero a chance to fight ; here the 
dice are loaded. The play is, however, a powerful 
and beautiful picture. 

" Riders to the Sea " serves to illustrate the es- 
sential difference between the one-act play and the 
play in two or more acts : since the former is al- 
most always concerned with but a single incident, 
it is capable of very little development. Now a 
tragedy is not a fact nor an event ; it must show 
great and strong characters — or at least charac- 
ters in which there is potential greatness or 
strength — struggling with forces which are finally 
too great to be overcome. And zt>e must see the 



JOHN MILLINGTON SYNGE 193 

struggle. A tragic figure must have the oppor- 
tunity to fail honorably, and we wish to see him 
trying to evade his fate. " Hamlet " would be 
ordinary melodrama if we were deprived of his 
soul-revealing soliloquies ; " CEdipus," too, if we 
could not follow the King's efforts to escape what 
was decreed. A one-act play can scarcely more 
than indicate the result of a struggle. The last 
act of " Hamlet " is not a tragedy in itself, and 
" Riders to the Sea," like that last act, is but the 
result of what has gone on for a long time before. 
At the end we feel something of the great sorrow 
and eventual peace of the old woman in her last 
words : " Michael has a clean burial in the far 
north, by the grace of the Almighty God. Bartley 
will have a fine coffin out of the white boards, and 
a deep grave surely. What more can we want 
than that? No man at all can be living forever, 
and we must be satisfied." Still, the struggle was 
wanting. 

Is a one-act tragedy possible.? 



THE PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN 
WORLD 

A comedy in three acts. First performed in 1907. 

In the preface to "The Playboy" Synge wrote: 
". . . in countries where the imagination of the peo- 
ple, and the language they use, is rich and living, it 
is possible for a writer to be rich and copious in his 
words, and at the same time give the reality, which is 
the root of all poetry, in a comprehensive and natural 
form." This play is the living embodiment of Synge's 
ideas on the combination of reality and poetry in the 
drama. " The Playboy " — indeed, all of Synge's 
plays — is outside the realm of literary " movements " 
and coteries ; his plays are not plays of ideas. Theses 
and problems die. Ideas are for a generation, or for a 
few generations. Again the dramatist expounds (in 
the preface to " The Tinker's Wedding ") : " The 
drama is made serious — in the French sense of the 
word — not by the degree in which it is taken up with 
problems that are serious in themselves, but by the 
degree in which it gives the nourishment, not very 
easy to define, on which our imaginations live. . . . 
The drama, like the symphony, does not teach or 
prove anything. ..." 

1. In his travel-book, " The Aran Islands," we 
find the following passage: "... He often tells 
194 



JOHN MILLINGTON SYNGE 195 

me about a Connaught man who killed his father 
with the blow of a spade when he was in a passion, 
and then fled to this island and threw himself on 
the mercy of some of the natives. . . . They hid 
him in a hole . . , and kept him safe for weeks, 
though the police came and searched for him, and 
he could hear their boots grinding on the stones 
over his head. In spite of a reward which was 
offered, the island was incorruptible, and after 
much trouble the man was safely shipped to 
America. 

" This impulse to protect the criminal is univer- 
sal in the west. It seems partly due to the associa- 
tion between justice and the hated English juris- 
diction, but more directly to the primitive feeling 
of these people, who are never criminals yet always 
capable of crime, that a man will not do wrong 
unless he is under the influence of a passion which 
is as irresistible as a storm on the sea. If a man 
has killed his father, and is already sick and broken 
with remorse, they can see no reason why he should 
be dragged away and killed by the law. 

" Such a man, they say, will be quiet all the rest 
of his life, and if you suggest that punishment is 
needed as an example, they ask, ' Would any one 
kill his father if he was able to help it? ' " 

Out of his sympathy and enthusiasm for life, its 
hiimor, its bite, its contradictions, its exhilaration, 
Synge wrote this play. The dramatist's end was 



196 JOHN MILLINGTON SYNGE 

"reality" and "joy." He was little concerned 
with technic, he had no purpose but that of allow- 
ing his living creatures to revel in life, to revel in 
rich idioms. Still, this apparently spontaneous 
comedy was the result of arduous labor : George 
Moore relates that the last act was rewritten thir- 
teen times. 

2. Many plays, of all ages and periods, have 
contained first acts with very little in them but 
the exposition of a few facts and the creation of 
the environment or milieu. The opening of " The 
Playboy " is full of atmosphere, and strikes the 
keynote of the action which is to follow ; but there 
is no such conscious preparation as there is in the 
expository act of Pinero's " Thunderbolt." Peg- 
een Mike, in Synge's play, opens the act with: 
" Six yards of stuff for to make a yellow gown. A 
pair of lace boots with lengthy heels on them and 
brassy eyes. A hat is suited for a wedding-day. 
A fine tooth comb. To be sent with three barrels 
of porter in Jimmy Farrell's creel cart on the even- 
ing of the coming Fair to Mister Micha,el James 
Flaherty. With the best compliments of this sea- 
son. Margaret Flaherty." Compare this simple 
paragraph with the elaborate preparatory open- 
ings of " The Second Mrs. Tanqueray " and 
" Iris." 

3. Throughout the play the development of the 
plot, such as it is, goes hand in hand with the 



JOHN MILLINGTON SYNGE 197 

development of Christy's character. Beginning 
with Christy's " I had it in my mind it was a differ- 
ent word and a bigger " (just after his entrance 
in the first act), trace, by reference to his speeches, 
how, in his own estimation and in that of his audi- 
ence, he grows from " a slight young man . . . 
very tired and frightened and dirty " to a " likely 
gaffer in the end of all." There is a certain simi- 
larity between the growth of Hamlet's character 
and Christy's. 

4. " The Playboy " is literary in the dramatic 
sense of the word. Can the same be said of 
Stephen Phillips's " Paolo and Francesca " ? 



AUGUSTA GREGORY 

Lady Augusta Gregory was born at Roxborough, 
County Galway, Ireland, in 1859. For many years 
she has participated, like Yeats, in various revivals of 
Irish lore and literature, and in the creation of a 
national theater and drama. Together with Yeats and 
other collaborators, she helped found the Irish Na- 
tional Theater Society, and is now manager of the 
Abbey Theater in Dublin. 

Lady Gregory is one of the most important figures 
in the modern Irish movement: her rewriting of the 
ancient Irish legends — in " Cuchulain of Muir- 
themne," " Gods and Fighting Men," and " The Book 
of Saints and Wonders " — her plays, her lecturing, 
her co-operation in innumerable societies for the social 
and political betterment of her country, entitle her to 
a place of honor by the side of Yeats. Her best plays, 
her comedies that is, were written in order to furnish 
relief to the historical plays, the folk and fairy-plays 
which were at one period threatening to make the 
Abbey Theater a one-sided institution. In the note 
appended to " Spreading the News," she says: " The 
idea of this play first came to me as a tragedy. . , . 
But comedy and not tragedy was wanted at our the- 
ater to put beside the high poetic work, ' The King's 
Threshold,' ' The Shadowy Waters,' ' On Baile's 
Strand,' ' The Well of the Saints ' ; and I let laughter 
198 



AUGUSTA GREGORY 199 

have its way with the little play." Five of the com- 
edies in her volume called " Seven Short Plays," and 
one or two others, are surely as quaint and humorous 
and truly comic as any of our time. They may well 
be compared with the lighter pieces of Moliere : kindly 
yet satirical, gay yet at times bitter, but always in- 
tensely human. Lady Gregory excels in the one-act 
form; in her longer plays, like "The Image," she 
lacks the necessary skill in the construction of a mov- 
ing and interesting story. Of mystic and tragic beauty 
Lady Gregory is more sparing, but " The Traveling 
Man " and " The Gaol Gate," the latter in particular, 
are noble bits of pathos, well written in stately and 
rhythmical prose. Were it not for the haunting echoes 
of Synge's language, there would be no ground for 
hesitating to place Mary Cahel's speeches in " The 
Gaol Gate " as the finest prose produced in the Irish 
Theater. 

PLAYS 

Spreading the News (1904). 

Performed by the Irish Players on tour 1911-2. 
KiNCORA (1905). 
The White Cockade (1905). 
Hyacinth Halvey (1906). 

Performed by the Irish Players on tour 1911-2. 
-The Gaol Gate (1906). 

Performed by the Irish Players on tour 1911-2. 
The Canavans (1906). 
The Jackdaw (1907). 

Performed by the Irish Players on tour 1911-2. 



200 AUGUSTA GREGORY 

The Rising of the Moon (1907). 

Performed by the Irish Players on tour 1911-2. 
The Poorhouse (in collaboration with Douglas Hyde, 

1907). 
Dervoroilla (1907). 
The Unicorn from the Stars (in collaboration with 

W. B. Yeats, 1907). 
The Workhouse Ward (1908). 

Performed by the Irish Players on tour 1911-2. 
The Image (1909). 

Performed by the Irish Players on tour 1911-2. 
The Traveling Man (1910). 
The Full Moon (1910). 
Coats (I91O). 

Performed by the Irish Players 1913. 
The Deliverer (1911). 
MacDarragh's Wife (1912). 
The Bogie Men (1912). 
Damer's Gold (1912). 

Performed by the Irish Players 1913. 

Lady Gregory has translated plays by Moli^re, 
Sudermann, and Goldoni. 

" Spreading the News," " Hyacinth Halvey," " The 
Gaol Gate," " The Jackdaw," " The Rising of the 
Moon," " The Workhouse Ward," and " The Travel- 
ing Man " are published in " Seven Short Plays " by 
Maunsel (Putnam is the American agent) ; " Grania," 
" Kincora," " Dervorgilla," " The Canavans," " The 
White Cockade," and " The Deliverer " are published 
by Putnam in two volumes as " Folk-Hisrtory Plays " ; 
" The Image " is published separately by Maunsel ; 



AUGUSTA GREGORY 201 

" The Full Moon," " Coats," " MacDarragh's Wife," 
" The Bogie Men," and " Darner's Gold " are pub- 
lished by Putnam in " New Comedies "; " The Rising 
of the Moon " is included in " Chief Contemporary 
Dramatists " (Houghton Mifflin). The translations 
from Moliere are published by Maunsel in " The Kil- 
tartan Moliere." The other translations are not pub- 
lished. For " The Unicorn from the Stars," see under 
William Butler Yeats. " The Poorhouse " is not 
obtainable. 

References: See under William Butler Yeats, gen- 
eral reference books on the Irish movement by Corne- 
lius Weygandt, Mario Borsa, L. Paul-Dubois, Maurice 
Bourgeois, Lady Gregory, W. B. Yeats, George 
Moore, Clayton Hamilton, and Ludwig Lewisohn. — 
Magazines: Quarterly Review, vol. ccxv (p. 234); 
Collier's, vol. xlvii (p. 15); Outlook, vol. xcix (p. 
9^6); Forum, vol. xlviii (p. 465); Contemporary Re- 
view, vol. cii (p. 602) ; Independent, vol. Ixxiv (p. 
857); Living Age, vol. cclxxxi (p. 332). 



HYACINTH HALVEY 

A comedy in one act. First performed in 1906. 

The note (p. 205, "Seven Short Plays") tells of 
the origin of this little play: " I was pointed out one 
evening a well-brushed, well-dressed man in the stalls, 
and was told gossip about him, perhaps not all true, 
which made me wonder if that appearance and be- 
havior as of extreme respectability might not now and 
again be felt a burden. After a while he translated 
himself in my mind into Hyacinth; and as one must 
set one's original a little way off to get a translation 
rather than a tracing, he found himself in Cloon, 
where, as in other parts of our country, ' character ' 
is built up or destroyed by a password or an emotion, 
rather than by experience or deliberation. The idea 
was more of a universal one than I knew at the first, 
and I have had but uneasy appreciation from some 
apparently blameless friends." 

Like most of Lady Gregory's comedies, " Hyacinth 
Halvey " contains a universal idea or basis : reputa- 
tion is in a great measure a matter of " a password 
or an emotion." Hyacinth, having a good reputation 
thrust upon him, may do as he likes: his good name 
will cling to him. In this play we laugh at humanity: 
here is the essence of comedy. 
202 



AUGUSTA GREGORY 203 

1. In the realm of what is termed the modern 
drama, we have seen that classification is becoming 
more and more difficult. " Hyacinth Halvey " can 
safely be termed comedy, but comedy with a con- 
tinual tendency toward farce. The characters are 
undoubtedly " possible," and the situation likewise, 
yet somehow Hyacinth's unbroken series of fail- 
ures to lose his good reputation, and Fardy Far- 
rell's unparalleled failures to lose his bad one, lead 
us to assume that the dramatist is bordering upon 
farce. Possibly the Irish setting and the good sim- 
ple people render the episodes sufficiently foreign 
to enable us to accept the facts, yet these charac- 
ters are so delightfully human that they must be 
taken as universal types. 

2. This play, together with " Spreading the 
News," "The Jackdaw," and "The Workhouse 
Ward," raises again the question of comedy and 
tragedy. At the risk of being paradoxical, one 
might say that a tragedy is a play the closing 
of which is its goal, the spire of its meaning; a 
comedy is one the whole of which stands in and by 
itself, for the sake of its characters, and which has 
no end. Tragedy shows the struggles of strong 
individuals against fate (" (Edipus ") or circum- 
stances ("Romeo and Juliet"); against them- 
selves ("Hamlet") or against others ("Julius 
Caesar " and " Othello "), and must end in defeat. 
Comedy is not concerned with the outcome; it 



204 AUGUSTA GREGORY 

amuses us from minute to minute: the outcome 
never seriously matters. Usually the end is the 
union of lovers, which is the merest convention. 
Had " Hamlet " ended in any other way than as 
it does, the play would have been spoiled or rad- 
ically changed, had " As You Like It " not ended 
with the series of unions, the play would still have 
had meaning in itself, intrinsic dramatic value. 
Tragedy points forward to the catastrophe — it is 
not a tragedy until the tragic outcome occurs 
— comedy is sufficient unto itself. 

Lady Gregory has recognized this fact, and has 
left three or four of her comedies with " hanging " 
ends. The best examples of this are " Hyacinth 
Halvey " and " The Jackdaw." In the former, we 
are shown Hyacinth trying in vain to undeceive 
the people as to his " character " ; a series of in- 
cidents demonstrates the utter futility of the at- 
tempt. There is no denouement; " Let us there- 
fore ring down the curtain," says Lady Gregory. 

Similarly, in " The Jackdaw," there is no solu- 
tion : the police are coming, there will doubtless be 
an explanation, but that will not interest us. 
Therefore the dramatist says : " Sounds of feet 
and talking and knock at the door. Cooney hides 
under counter. Nestor lies down on top of henchy 
spreads his newspaper over him. Mrs. Broderick 
goes behind counter." Then Nestor says: "(rais- 
ing paper from his face and looking out) Tommy 



AUGUSTA GREGORY 205 

Nally, I will give you five shillings if you will 
draw ' Tit-Bits ' over my feet." — That is the end. 
3. Notice by way of comparison the elaborate 
denouements of " Sweet Lavender " and " The 
Liars.'' 



THE RISING OF THE MOON 

A play in one act. First performed in 1907. 

The origin of this little patriotic play was of the 
slightest sort, according to the author (see p. 205, 
" Seven Short Plays "). Its simplicity, its direct 
emotional appeal, its quiet humor, leave scarcely any 
ground for criticism or analysis. 

1. With all its simplicity, " The Rising of the 
Moon " is a carefully prepared little play. Ob- 
serve the methods used to create atmosphere. An 
effective bit of " living stage-direction " is the 
speech : " There's a flight of steps here that leads 
to the water. This is a place that should be 
minded well. If he got down here, his friends 
might have a boat to meet him ; they might send 
it in here from outside." Without more ado, the 
action is begun : two and a half pages supply what 
preparation is needful, then the Ballad-singer 
comes in. The quick, short dialogue, the quaint 
idioms, the amusing manner in which the slight 
plot winds about, but ever pursues its way upward 
to the climax (pp. 94-5) — all this reveals careful 
workmanship. The denouement is brief, and the 
close very effective. 

Could Lady Gregory have left the end of this 
306 



AUGUSTA GREGORY 207 

play " hanging," as she did in " Hyacinth Hal- 
vey " and " The Jackdaw "? 

2. During the past few years certain critics and 
dramatists — Synge, Jones,* Bennett, and Knob- 
lauch are among the latter — have either openly or 
in practice advocated a return to the play for 
the play's sake, and have consistently avoided 
thesis plays, plays with " ideas." Ideas, they feel, 
are usurping the place of joy and life in the the- 
ater. They object in general to Brieux and 
Bernard Shaw, not primarily because such drama- 
tists write plays for the purpose of furthering a 
reform or combating a social abuse or setting 
forth problems, but because in so doing they are 
abusing the dramatic form, which is intended to 
represent all of life, and not to expose ideas which 
have to do, in a greater or less degree, with life. 

Lady Gregory, in particular, depicts life as she 
sees it, and allows ideas to grow out of her por- 
trayal of it. She is always more interested in 
people than in things and abstract ideas, so that 
her plays are likely to outlive those of Hervieu 
and Brieux in which abstractions preponderate. 
She is not devoid of ideas — far from it — only her 
ideas are always inseparable from her characters. 
She has not " lost sight of the individual." 

3. In what respects is " The Rising of the 
Moon " a theatrical play ? 

* See Henry Arthur Jones, " The Theater of Ideas " 
(Doran). 



T. C. MURRAY 

T. C. Murray was born in a small town in the 
County Cork, in 1873. Educated at local schools, he 
entered St. Patrick's College in Dublin, and studied 
to become a teacher. At the end of two years, he 
was qualified to teach as a National schoolmaster, and 
has taught in various schools in his native county. At 
an early age he wrote verse, and in 1909 his first 
play, " The Wheel o' Fortune," was produced at a 
little theater in Cork. 

Extracts from a letter to the writer will explain 
some of Mr. Murray's activities: " I think I may at 
the outset safely describe myself as a playwright 
by accident. Five or six years ago a knot of Cork 
people of literary tastes formed a society for the 
production of original plays by Corkmen. The secre- 
tary buttonholed me on the street one Saturday even- 
ing, desiring to know if I had ever essayed anything 
in drama. I had not. . . . He urged me to try 
something in dramatic literature for the society and 
in a few weeks the MS. of ' The Wheel o' Fortune,' 
a little one-act comedy of matchmaking, was in his 
hands. . . . The comedy, despite its many crudities, 
proved a surprising success. Something over a year 
ago I reconstructed the ending . . . and rewrote 
most of the dialogue, and it was produced by the 
Abbey Company . . . under the title of ' Sovereign 
S08 



T. C. MURRAY 209 

Love.' 'Birthright' (October, 191O) followed 'The 
Wheel o' Fortune.' Whatever craft there is in it 
comes from pure instinct. After ' Birthright ' came 
' Maurice Harte ' (June, 1912), and in the meantime 
I had devoured all that was significant in modern 
dramatic literature, making a study of the Russian, 
Norwegian, Swedish, and German schools of drama 
... I am told that the technic of * Maurice 
Harte ' is inferior to that of ' Birthright.' Instinct 
itself proved the surer guide in shaping and working 
out my theme ! " 

PLAYS 

The Wheel o' Fortune (1909). 
Birthright (191O). 

Performed by the Irish Players on tour 1911-2. 
Maurice Harte (1912). 

Performed by the Irish Players on tour 1912-3. 
Sovereign Love (1914). 

" Birthright " and " Maurice Harte " are published 
by Luce. The other plays have not yet appeared in 
print. 

References: Books already referred to by Corne- 
lius Weygandt, Frank Wadleigh Chandler, Clayton 
Hamilton. 



BIRTHRIGHT 

A play in two acts. First performed in ipiO. 

" Birthright " is unquestionably the best of the 
realistic plays of the younger generation of Irish play- 
wrights. It is masterly in construction, full of good 
characterization, and contains the spirit of true 
tragedy. No other Irish play of its kind is so relent- 
lessly direct, so moving, so stirring and powerful. 
Like the same author's " Maurice Harte," it is con- 
cerned with a family struggle: the conflict between 
man and wife, between brother and brother. 

1. The dialogue of the first fifteen pages ap- 
pears casual and yet inevitable. While this is all 
exposition, at the same time it starts an emotional 
rise. The antagonism of Bat and his wife Maura 
is clearly set forth in words and action, while that 
between the brothers, neither of whom has yet ap- 
peared, is introduced in the course of the con- 
versation. Then Shane, the younger son, comes in 
(p. 15). There is a momentary release of 
dramatic tension, then a foreboding note in the 
remarks about the weather (see paragraph on the 
"pathetic fallacy," p. 156, present volume), then 
the elder son, Hugh, makes his appearance (p. 
19). Here is a striking contrast, for Hugh is a 
210 



T. C. MURRAY 211 

splendid, athletic, whole-hearted fellow. The scene 
with his mother affords contrast as well as neces- 
sary information for the audience. Hugh must go 
out for the evening; he leaves just before his 
father and brother re-enter. Again the fate-motif 
is sounded : " Well, 'tis the long lane that have 
no turning, and my brave Hugh have come to 
the turning at last." For Bat has determined to 
send Hugh to America in place of Shane (p. 27). 
There is a climax at the end of this act, as Shane's 
name on the trunk tag is changed to Hugh's. The 
curtain leaves the audience just sufficiently sure of 
what is to happen to avoid confusion, and curious 
enough to feel further interest. 

2. The first act has been analyzed in some detail 
as to the progress of the story. One of the most 
striking and admirable qualities of this play is 
what may be termed sweep: compressed into two 
short acts is a complete tragedy, the basis of 
which is as old and as universal as the world. 
Given the means and the background, the author 
could scarcely have allowed more space to the de- 
velopment of the plot, and, judged according to 
the criterion of theatrical effectiveness — or even 
reading — it would have been superfluous and there- 
fore fatal, to add more. 

With very little preparation, the climax and 
tragedy of the second act is reached : the first part 
of the act is the simplest sort of development. 



212 T. C. MURRAY 

From the moment Shane enters (p. 38) the action 
rises swiftly, naturally, fatally, until Hugh is 
" felled to the ground," and the play closes. 

Probably the extreme simplicity and directness 
of the play were the result of the author's instinct- 
ive feeling for what is dramatic. His words (p. 
209) serve but to show that dramatists are for the 
most part born, not made. 

3. St. John G. Ervine's " Mixed Marriage " is 
in four acts, yet its story is essentially as unified 
as that of " Birthright." In what way does 
Ervine justify the division into four, rather than 
three or two acts? Would "Mixed Marriage" 
have been a better play if it had been condensed 
into three acts, or two? Could it have been? 



ST. JOHN G. ERVINE 

St. John G. Ervine was born at Belfast, in 1883. 
He first entered the insurance business, then was 
dramatic critic of the Daily Citizen. Since his resi- 
dence in London he has written a number of miscel- 
laneous essays, a few plays, and the novel: " Mrs. 
Martin's Man." 

Ervine is one of the younger group in the Irish 
movement, who, together with T. C. Murray and 
Lennox Robinson, have turned their attention to the 
realistic depiction of life in the cities and small 
towns. Ervine has with one exception laid the scene 
of his principal plays in and around Belfast: " Mixed 
Marriage," " The Orangeman," and " The Magnani- 
mous Lover " are plays of town life, and stand in dis- 
tinct contrast with the wild, half-imaginary fantasies 
of Synge, the quaint comedies of Lady Gregory, and 
the fairy twilight plays of Yeats. Ervine concerns 
himself with the struggle of character with character: 
Protestant and Catholic, youth and age, prejudice and 
freedom. His power lies in the creation of human 
characters. The father and mother in " Mixed Mar- 
riage," the father and mother again in " The Orange- 
man," and Jane Clegg in the play of that name, are 
distinct contributions. " Jane Clegg." his latest play, 
is laid in England, and marks a departure in subject- 
matter. 

213 



214 ST. JOHN G. ERVINE 

PLAYS 

Mixed Marriage (IpH)- 

Performed by the Irish Players on tour 1911-2. 
The Magnanimous Lover (1912). 
The Orangeman (191S). 
The Critics (1913). 
Jane Clegg (1914). 
IsA Blackwood (1914). 

The first four of these plays are published in a 
single volume, " Four Irish Plays," by Maunsel 
(Dublin) ; " Mixed Marriage " and " The Magnani- 
mous Lover " are issued separately by the same pub- 
lisher (Luce in America) ; " Jane Clegg " is published 
by Sidgwick and Jackson (London). 

References: Books already referred to under 
William Butler Yeats, by Cornelius Weygandt and 
Clayton Hamilton. — Magazine: Everybody's, vol. 
xxviii (p. 678). 



MIXED MARRIAGE 

A play in four acts. First performed in 191 1. 

This is primarily a play of character, the sort in 
which this dramatist excels. The men and women, 
and the environment in which they exist, are what 
interest him. 

1. In order the better to set off his characters 
he has introduced a thesis, which is clearly stated 
(p. 7 of the "Four Irish Plays") in the first 
act. Rainey says : " A wudden have a son o' 
mine marry a Cathlik fur all the wurl. A've 
nathin' agin the girl, but A believe in stickin' 
t'yer religion. A Cathlik's a Cathlik, and a 
Prodesan's a Prodesan. Ye can't get over 
that." Tom replies : " Och, sure, they're all the 
same. Ye cudden tell the differs atween a Cath- 
lik an' a Prodesan if ye met them in the street 
an' didden know what their religion wus. A'm not 
one fur marryin' out o' my religion meself, but 
A'm no bigot. Nora Murray's a fine wumman." 
With this plain statement of theme we might be 
prone to expect at first a thesis play, pure and 
simple, but the next speech affords at least a cue 
as to the trend the play will take. When Rainey 
declares, " Fine or no fine, she's a Cathlik an' A'll 
216 



216 ST. JOHN G. ERVINE 

niver consent til a son o' mine marryin' her," it is 
reasonable to assume that the play will be one of 
" conflicting wills." This is in fact what it is, 
and the wills conflict over a question which is after 
all of only secondary artistic importance. Rainey 
and Mrs. Rainey, Nora Murray and Hugh, must 
have something to struggle about, something which 
will develop and expose their characters. 

This first act, like the succeeding ones, is well 
balanced: character against character, with suffi- 
cient plot and sufficient background to form an 
harmonious whole. 

2. The struggle, it has been frequently observed, 
is one of the basic principles, though not unalter- 
able laws, of the drama from time immemorial. A 
play in which there is a sharply indicated clash 
of interests, like Echegaray's " Madman or 
Saint " and the present work, begins with a more 
or less general statement : in the case of " Mixed 
Marriage " it consists in Rainey 's objection to the 
intermarriage of Protestants and Catholics. First 
we are shown that his son Hugh is in love with 
Nora Murray, a Catholic. But the dramatist does 
not consider it sufficient to confine the struggle to 
these few people: he introduces external forces. 
Michael's words (p. 18) are ominous: "It 
mightn't be again you on'y though ? " Notice how 
the struggle develops from the particular to the 
general. 



THE AMERICAN DRAMA 



BRONSON HOWARD 

Bronson Croker Howard was born at Detroit, in 
1842. Receiving his primary education in Detroit, 
he prepared himself for Yale at an eastern prepara- 
tory school, but was prevented from entering college 
because of an affection of the eyes. He then returned 
to Detroit, and joined the staff of the Free Press, to 
which he made numerous contributions. At the same 
time he was experimenting with the play-form. Most 
of his early attempts were never produced. His first 
play was a dramatization of an episode from " Les 
Miserables," called " Fantine " ; this was produced in 
Detroit in 1864. The following year Howard came 
to New York, wrote for the Tribune and the Post, 
carried plays from manager to manager during a 
period of five years, until in 1870 Augustin Daly 
accepted and produced " Saratoga," which was im- 
mensely successful. From then on Howard's success 
was assured; "The Banker's Daughter," "Young 
Mrs. Winthrop," " The Henrietta," " Shenandoah," 
and " Aristocracy " were among the best-known and 
best-liked of American plays. Howard died at Avon- 
by-the-Sea, New Jersey, in 1908. 

Brander Matthews (in "An Appreciation") says: 

" Bronson Howard's career as a dramatist covered the 

transition period of the modern drama when it was 

changing from the platform-stage to the picture-frame- 

219 



220 BRONSON HOWARD 

stage. His immediate predecessor, Dion Boucicault, 
worked in accordance with the conditions of the plat- 
form-stage, with its rhetorical emphasis, its confiden- 
tial soliloquies to the audience, and its frequent 
changes of scene in the course of the act. . . . When 
Bronson Howard began to write for the stage he ac- 
cepted the convenient traditions of the time, although 
he followed T. W. Robertson in giving only a single 
scene to each act. As a result of this utilization of 
conventions soon to seem outworn, certain of his 
earlier plays appeared to him late in life incapable 
of being brought down to date, as they had been com- 
posed in accordance with a method now discarded. 
. . . He moved with his time; and his latest plays, 
' Aristocracy' for one, and ' Kate ' for another, are in 
perfect accord with the most modern formula. Yet 
he did not go as far as some other playwrights of 
to-day. He knew that the art of the theater, like 
every other art, can live only by the conventions which 
allow it to depart from the mere facts of life." How- 
ard deserves the title of " Dean of American Drama " 
because he was the first to awaken to the fact that 
in the America of his day there was material for an 
indigenous drama, and he did his best, in spite of 
French influences, to throw off the conventions of the 
past and point a way to the future. 

PLAYS 

Fantine (adapted from " Les Mis6rables," 1864). 
Saratoga (1870). 
Diamonds (1872). 



BRONSON HOWARD 221 

moorcroft (1874). 
Lilian's Last Love (1877). 

The Banker's Daughter (revised version of " Lili- 
an's Last Love," 1878). 
Old Love Letters (1878). 
Hurricanes (1878). 
Wives (adapted from Moliere, 1879). 
Fun in a Green-Room (1882). 
Young Mrs. Winthrop (1882). 
One of Our Girls (1885). 
Met by Chance (1887). 
The Henrietta (1887). 
Baron Rudolph (1887). 
Shenandoah (1889). 
Aristocracy (1892). 
Peter Stuyvesant (in collaboration with Brander 

Matthews, 1899). 
Knave and Queen (never acted). 
Kate (never acted). 

" Young Mrs. Winthrop " and " Saratoga " are 
published by French ; " Kate " by Harper's ; the other 
plays have not been published. 

References: "In Memoriam: Bronson Howard" 
(New York, 1910) ; " The Autobiography of a Play " 
by Bronson Howard, with an introduction by Augustus 
Thomas (Dramatic Museum of Columbia University) ; 
Montrose J. Moses, " The American Dramatist " 
(Little, Brown) ; Brander Matthews, " A Study of the 
Drama " (Houghton Mifflin) ; Richard Burton, " The 
New American Drama " (Crowell) ; Charlton An- 
drews, "The Drama To-day" (Lippincott). — Maga- 



222 BRONSON HOWARD 

sines: Bookman, vol. x (p. 195), vol. xxviii (p. 55'); 
Century, vol. Ixi (p. 28), vol. iii (p. 465) ; Munsey, vol. 
xxxiv (p. 122, p. 199) ; Theatre (London), Aug., 1879; 
Booh Buyer, vol. xvi (p. 113); Independent, vol. Ixi 
(p. 735), and vol. Ixv (p. 391) ; North American, vol. 
clxxxviii (p. 504). 



YOUNG MRS. WINTHROP 

A play in four acts. First performed in 1882. 

Of the three plays of Howard which have been pub- 
lished, " Young Mrs. Winthrop " is probably the best 
and most typical. The dramatist's best and worst 
qualities are easily discernible. Like some of his 
contemporaries and many of his followers, Howard 
possessed a great deal of that essential kindliness, 
sympathy with the weaknesses of human nature, and 
sentiment which permeate the American theater. 
" Young Mrs. Winthrop " is a kindly sermon on the 
dangers and blessings of matrimony, besides being an 
ingratiating and human, perhaps too " human," 
comedy. 

1. Any play written in 1882 is likely to bristle 
with " asides," soliloquies, and other conventions 
which have since fallen into disfavor with drama- 
tists. This play opens with a soliloquy: ' 

Mrs. Ruth. (L.) — There, Miss Dolly! (tying rib- 
bon on the doll and holding it up) you will have a 
beautiful mother to-morrow, and I shall be your grand- 
grandmother. Your name is to be ' Ruth ' — after me 
— how do you like it? Your little mother has a very 
large family already, but I am sure she will love you 
223 



224 BRONSON HOWARD 

more than any of the rest (crosses to R. hy fire, kisse* 
the doll). Lie here, my pet (holding the doll to her 
breast). You must go to sleep at once, for mother 
Rosie will be up very early in the morning. (Enter 
Douglas), etc. 

A great deal of labor is spared the dramatist by 
allowing his audience to know (1) who the char- 
acter present is, (2) what she is like, (3) a little 
of the situation. The first " aside " occurs on the 
next page (p. 4) : 

Doug, (stopping. Aside) — I asked Constance not 
to go to-night. 

Again, an easy device. Then, on page 25, there 
is another soliloquy: 

Enter Constance, up L. 

Cons. — Back again! (with a weary air, throwing 
aside her cloak. Pause). How quiet the house is! 
It's no use going to bed ; I cannot sleep. I wish these 
" social gaieties " as they call them, could go on for- 
ever. No matter how much I go out, or how bright 
the company is, it always ends in this; I am alone 
again, and I — I can't stop thinking. Oh! — I wish I 
could! I wish I could! Mr. Chetwyn was at the re- 
ception this evening. Douglas sent him word he could 
not meet him at the club. He sent the message after 
receiving that note from Mrs. Dunbar — she was not 
there to-night! Oh! — why must I keep thinking — 



BRONSON HOWARD 22^ 

thinking? (starting to her feet and moving C. 
Pauses). Perhaps I am wronging him. Yes. No — no 
— I will not believe it — I have not lost his love ! 
There is something I do not understand? I will 
speak to Douglas about it in the morning. (Smiling.) 
It will all come right. I must get to sleep as soon as 
I can, to be up bright and early with Rosie. I will 
peep in at my little darling before I go to sleep. 
(Going toward door, R. 2 E.) 

It has often been said in defense of the " aside " 
and the soliloquy that since the drama is a series 
of conventions, why not accept these as well as 
that most necessary of conventions : the foreshort- 
ening of time.'' For over two thousand years these 
conventions have been accepted, why then should 
we cast them aside at this late date? The drama 
has changed radically during the past century, and 
is still developing at a rapid rate. With the 
change in subject-matter has come a correspond- 
ing change in manner of treatment: realistic sub- 
jects demanded realistic treatment. The " aside " 
is not natural, because it does not seem natural: 
people seldom or never turn their heads aside and 
utter words not intended to be heard by any one 
else; and when these words are spoken loudly 
enough to be overheard by a large audience, while 
the characters who must not hear them are within 
whispering distance of the speaker, the convention 
is too apparent. The uselessness of this particular 



226 BRONSON HOWARD 

convention is proved by the fact that almost every 
aside in a play can be deleted, and the audience 
be none the less well informed as to what is going 
on. Test this in the present play. 

On the other hand, the soliloquy * is legiti- 
mate. Ibsen in " A Doll's House " has made gen- 
erous use of it. People do soliloquize, often aloud ; 
even if they did not, it is not unnatural to hear 
a character give voice to thoughts, which must be 
near the surface, when he is alone on the stage. 
Do Hamlet's soliloquies seem unnatural.'* Do 
Nora's in the Ibsen play just mentioned.'* 

2. Howard's modernity of spirit, his vision of 
the path to be taken by the play of the future was 
incontestably greater than his actual achievement: 
he pointed out the way for those who were to 
be technically more efficient than he, for those 
who were, living in a later generation, to treat of 
questions of the day. Augustus Thomas says of 
him (in "The Autobiography of a Play"): 
" Some philosopher tells us that a factor of great- 
ness in any field is the power to generalize, the 
ability to discover the principle underlying appar- 

*"He [Bronson Howard] once said, half jokingly, to 
his collaborator in * Peter Stuyvesant,' that, if he happened 
to write a play without a single soliloquy, he would be 
tempted to insert one, simply to retain the right to employ 
it when it was required. It may be noted, however, that 
he did not carry this out, since his last comedy, ' Kate,' 
is free from any soliloquy." — Brander Matthews in " An 
Appreciation" ("In Memoriam: Bronson Howard"). 



BRONSON HOWARD 227 

ently discordant facts. Bronson Howard's plays 
are notable for their evidence of this power. He 
saw causes, tendencies, results. His plays are ex- 
positions of this chemistry. ' Shenandoah ' dealt 
broadly with the forces and feelings behind the 
Civil War ; ' The Henrietta ' with the American 
passion for speculation — the money-madness that 
was dividing families. ' Aristocracy ' was a very 
accurate, although satirical, seizure of the disposi- 
tion, then in its strongest manifestation, of a 
newly-rich and Western family of native force to 
break into the exclusive social set of New York 
and to do so through a preparatory European 
alliance." 

What is the generalization in " Young Mrs. 
Winthrop ".? Wherein lies its modernity? 

3. Often — too often in the American drama — 
the child is brought into the action of a play in 
order to attract the sympathy of the audience. 
David Belasco has done this in " The Return of 
Peter Grimm " with notable effect. How has 
Howard utilized the child-motif in this play.? 



JAMES A. HERNE 

James A. Heme was born in 1839 at Cohoes, New 
York. After receiving a very rudimentary education 
he left home at the age of twenty and joined a the- 
atrical company in Troy, and began his actor's career 
in " Uncle Tom's Cabin." Soon after, he joined an- 
other company, played in Albany, then Baltimore, and 
at the age of thirty he became manager of the New 
York Grand Opera House. Leaving this situation, 
he became an actor again, and toured the country. 
His second marriage, in 1878, was a decisive point in 
his career: his wife, Miss Katherine Corcoran, helped 
and encouraged him to devote his time to the writing, 
rather than the acting of plays. His first play, 
" Hearts of Oak," was produced the year after his 
marriage. " Shore Acres," " Drifting Apart," " The 
Minute Men," " Sag Harbor," written during the next 
twenty years, brought their author fame and a good 
share of success. Heme continued to act for many 
years. He died in ipoi. 

Heme is a very important figure in American 
drama : in his melodramas there is a note of simplicity, 
of sympathy, of reality, which lifts them into the 
realm of true drama. In his most ambitious achieve- 
ments, " The Rev. Griffith Davenport " and " Mar- 
garet Fleming," there was said to be " tragic senti- 
ment," " forcefulnessr." and " serious simplicity." 
228 



JAMES A. HERNE 229 

Heme delighted and excelled in drawing rural types, 
and though he occasionally placed his characters in 
conventional settings and melodramatic situations, 
they were nearly always faithful and kindly por- 
trayals of life. His technic was " old-fashioned," his 
ideas possibly antiquated, according to modern stand- 
ards, but he was a force, an influence, an ideal. 

PLAYS 

Hearts of Oak (1879). 

The Minute Men (1886). 

Drifting Apart (1888). 

Margaret Fleming (1890). 

Shore Acres (1892). 

The Rev. Griffith Davenport (1899). 

Sag Harbor (1899). 

None of Heme's plays has been published. In a 
fire that destroyed the Heme home in 1909, the MSS. 
of " The Rev. Griffith Davenport " and " Margaret 
Fleming " were lost. 

References: Montrose J. Moses, "The American 
Dramatist" (Little, Brown); Richard Burton, "The 
New American Drama " (Growell) ; Norman Hap- 
good, " The Stage in America " (Macmillan) ; Charl- 
ton Andrews, "The Drama To-day" (Lippincott) ; 
Lewis C. Strang, " Famous Actors of To-day in 
America" (Page). — Magazines: Arena, vol. vi (p. 
401), vol. viii (p. 304), vol. xvii (p. 361), vol. xxvi 
(p. 282) ; Harper's Weekly, vol. xliii (pp. 139, 213) ; 
Literature, vol. iv (p. 265) ; Harper's Magazine, vol. 
Ixxxiii (p. 478) ; National Magazine, vol. xi (p. 393); 



or.O JAMES A. HERNE 

Pall Mall Magazine, vol. xx (p. 23) ; Outlook, Dec. 
28, 1912; Century, vol. Ixxxviii (p. 574). 

Note. — Since there is no printed copy of any 
Heme play, it is inadvisable to include a study out- 
line. For completeness' sake, however, and in case 
the play is ever published, there follow a few brief 
remarks on " Shore Acres." 



SHORE ACRES 

A play in three acts. First performed in 1892. 

This play was, according to all accounts, an 
intensely " human," amusing, and, in places, ex- 
citing drama. The following quotations are 
illuminating ; the first is from Montrose J. Moses's 
" The American Dramatist," the second from a 
letter by Henry George: 

" Even in ' Shore Acres,' during the scene in 
which Uncle Nat struggles with Martin in his 
effort to light the signal lamp, the sensational is 
very much in evidence ; but the unerring art of 
Mr. Heme saved him from the accusation of in- 
tense, glaring melodrama. He understood thor- 
oughly the balance between tension and quietude, 
and there is no bit of stage writing more natural, 
more cheerful, and more real than the act which 
succeeded this violent one in ' Shore Acres,' Uncle 
Nat preparing the Christmas stockings. Those 
who are fortunate enough to recollect the wonder- 
ful naturalness of Mr. Heme's acting, will always 
point to the final curtain of this play, where Uncle 
Nat, left alone on the stage, by the very flexibility 
of his facial expression, depicted the full beauty 
of his character, as he closed up the room for the 
281 



2S2 JAMES A. HERNE 

night, put out the lamps, and, lighted only by 
the glow from the fire in the stove, slowly left the 
room as the cuckoo clock struck twelve. Such 
work, of which Mr. Heme as an actor was capable, 
is to a certain extent the realization of Maeter- 
linck's idea of static drama." 

" I cannot too much congratulate you upon 
your success. You have done what you sought to 
do — made a play pure and noble that people will 
come to hear. You have taken the strength of 
realism and added to it the strength that comes 
from the wider truth that realism fails to see ; and 
in the simple portrayal of homely life, touched a 
universal chord. . . . Who, save you, can bring 
out the character you have created — a character 
which to others, as to me, must have recalled the 
tender memory of some sweet saint of God,'* " 



AUGUSTUS THOMAS 

Augustus Thomas was born at St. Louis, in 1859. 
He says (quoted in The Outlook, December 28, 1912) : 
" After Farragut ran the New Orleans blockade my 
father took direction of the St. Charles Theater in 
New Orleans, then owned by Ben DeBar. When he 
returned to St. Louis in 1865, I was in my seventh 
year, and my earliest recollections are tinged with 
his stories of Matilda Herron, John Wilkes Booth, 
and others who played in that theater. Father was 
an orator of considerable ability, and I remember him 
reciting long speeches from Kotzebue, Schiller, and 
Shakspere. In his associations with the theater he 
took me very early to plays, and I have always been 
an attendant; consequently dialogue seemed the most 
natural literary vehicle, I found later that this im- 
pression was justified when I discovered that the most 
telling things in Homer and later Greek poets and 
philosophers were in dialogue — that this was true of 
Confucius and Christ. I began writing plays when I 
was about fourteen years of age. When I was six- 
teen and seventeen, an amateur company that I or- 
ganized played in certain railway centers on the old 
North Missouri Railway for the benefit of local unions 
of the workingmen. In 1882 I made a dramatization 
of Mrs. Burnett's ' Editha's Burglar.' With this as a 
curtain-raiser and a rather slap-stick farce called 
233 



234 AUGUSTUS THOMAS 

' Combustion/ I made a tour of the country with a 
company that I organized, and with which I ran in 
debt several thousand dollars. In 1889 a four-act 
version of ' The Burglar/ arranged by me, was played 
in New York and was successful, and since that time 
my royalties have enabled me to give my attention on 
the business side exclusively to play-writing." 

Thomas is the most successful, skilful, and inter- 
esting of American dramatists of a former generation. 
Although he still writes plays, many of which have 
met with public approval, he belongs to the immediate 
past. " Arizona," a melodrama of the West, is one 
of his typical works ; even " The Witching Hour," a 
later play, is notable for the very qualities which went 
to the making of the earlier melodrama. Thomas is 
ingenious, he knows well the art of contriving moving 
stories, he knows the taste of the public and the re- 
quirements of the actor; but his ideas, while they are 
occasionally very interesting, are not significant. He 
has little to do with characterization. He is important 
by reason of his cleverness, his zest in the externals 
of life. 

PLAYS 

Editha's Burglar (dramatization from a story by 

Mrs. Burnett, 1887). 
A Man of the World (1889). 
Reckless Temple (1890). 
Afterthoitghts (1890). 
Alabama (1891). 
In Mizzoura (1893). 



AUGUSTUS THOMAS 286 

The Capitol (1894). 

New Blood (1894). 

The Man Upstairs (1895). 

The Overcoat (1898). 

The Hoosier Doctor (1898). 

The Meddler (1898). 

Oliver Goldsmith (190O). 

Arizona (190O). 

On the Quiet (19OI). 

Colorado (1901). 

Soldiers of Fortune (1902). 

The Earl of Pawtucket (1903). 

The Other Girl (1903). 

Mrs. Leffingwell's Boots (1905). 

De Lancey (1905). 

The Embassy Ball (1905). 

The Ranger (1907). 

The Witching Hour (1907). 

The Harvest Moon (1909). 

The Member from Ozark (191O). 

As a Man Thinks (1911). 

The Model (1912). 

Mere Man (1912). 

Indian Summer (1912). 

" Alabama " and " Arizona " are published by Ser- 
gei, Chicago; "The Witching Hour" by Houghton 
Mifflin in " Chief Contemporary Dramatists'/' and 
" As a Man Thinks " by Duffield. 

References: Montrose J. Moses, "The American 
Dramatist" (Little, Brown); Richard Burton, "The 
New American Drama " (Crowell) ; Charlton An- 



236 AUGUSTUS THOMAS 

drews, " The Drama To-day " (Lippincott) ; Arthur 
Ruhl, " Second Nights " (Scribner) ; William Winter, 
"The Wallet of Time," Vol. II (Moffat, Yard).— 
Magazines: Collier's, vol. Ixiv (p. 23); Outlook, vol. 
xciv (p. 212); North American, vol. clxxxvii (p. 
801); Delineator, vol. Ixxiii (p. 221); World's Work, 
vol. xviii; Harper's Weekly, vol. v (p. 13); vol. xliv 
(p. 947); Munsey, vol. xxiv (p. 413); vol. xxvii (p. 
522) ; Bookman, vol. xiv (p. 449), vol. xxxiii (p. 352) ; 
Critic, vol. xliv (p. 205) ; Sewanee Review, April, 
1907. 



THE WITCHING HOUR 

A play in four acts. First performed in 1907. 

In common with Clyde Fitch, Alfred Capus, and 
Sir Arthur Pinero, Augustus Thomas has always kept 
abreast of the times in the matter of modes, customs, 
and ideas. Probably his early journalistic career 
taught him the value of being " alive," and he has 
ever recognized the advantage of producing a play 
the basic idea of which is in the public mind. It is 
said that " The Witching Hour " was kept for ten 
years " until the time was opportune." Montrose J. 
Moses in his " American Dramatist " quotes Thomas 
as saying: " ' The Witching Hour ' is a seizure of the 
general attention that is given to telepathy and allied 
topics. And under all that, lies my own theory, ex- 
pressed on more than one occasion, that the theater 
is a place for the visualizing of ideas — that the the- 
ater is vital only when it is visualizing some idea then 
and at the time in the public mind. The theater is a 
vital part of everyday life; it is an institution, and 
as an institution it has a claim upon the popular 
attention principally in that fact. When it becomes 
a thing preservative, a museum for certain literary 
forms, or a laboratory for galvanizing archaic ideas, 
it is almost useless, and seldom successful aa. a busi- 
ness enterprise." 

237 



238 AUGUSTUS THOMAS 

1. For a number of years Thomas has refused 
to allow the present play to appear in print ; apart 
from certain practical reasons, he justly feared 
that a vehicle intended for production on the 
stage by actors, supported by scenery and 
" props " and lights, in which there was no at- 
tempt at " galvanizing archaic ideas," would not 
well survive the ordeal of being read. Very often 
good dialogue will suffer when perused in the 
library — dialogue that is interesting and effective 
on the boards ; it is very doubtful whether George 
Cohan's "Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford " or 
" Broadway Jones " would be half so amusing in 
a book as they are in the theater. However, " The 
Witching Hour" may now be judged independ- 
ently of the footlights.* 

Few of the plays considered in the present vol- 

* In an interview Augustus Thomas once said: " On 
the choice of words will depend very much the effective- 
ness of a play. The tone of them must change to suit the 
scene, the emotion. One way of creating humor is to use 
pompous or grandiloquent words. Emotion, on the other 
hand, keeps the words simple, very near the ground. Part 
of an audience might, perhaps, get deep feeling from 
unusual and very precise words, but the audience is made 
up for the greater part of people who are not thus trained. 
And when you write for the audience you must write for 
the great average. You will then use the simple, pas- 
sionate words such as fire, stars, hand, heart, root, rock, 
grave. In the same way you may simplify your words 
by omitting many. For instance, note the increase in 
emphasis and force between, ' I wish you to go,' ' You 
must go,' ' Go !' and finally the simple opening of the door." 



AUGUSTUS THOMAS 239 

ume sound so natural, so " everyday " as this. 
Note the very opening: 

Jo. — Massar Brookfield. 

Jack (outside, left). — Well, Jo? 

Jo. — Mr. Denning, sah. 

Jack. — Ask Mr. Denning to come up. 

Jo. — Yes, sah. 

(Exit center. More talk and laughter, left.) 

(Jack enters left. . . . ) 

Jack (at door, left). — Lew! I say — Lew — you 
ladies excuse Mr. Ellinger a moment.'' 

Helen, Alice, Viola (outside). — Oh — yes. Cer- 
tainly. 

Nothing could be more casual, yet there is an 
underlying art — skilfully concealing itself — which 
is typical of much of Thomas's best work. Rarely 
does he attempt to be " literary," often he tries 
to be the reverse, apparently through fear of be- 
ing thought " literary." Compare this dialogue 
with that of " Young Mrs. Winthrop " and of 
" The Liars." 

2. Thomas wished to write a play about tele- 
pathic phenomena and superstition ; and the exact 
form into which he was to cast his play must have 
suggested itself to him when he was thinking of 
the incidents which would illustrate his ideas. 
Since these situations would necessarily be of a 
startling and novel nature, it seemed inevitable that 
the play should fall into the category of melo- 



240 AUGUSTUS THOMAS 

drama. Telepathy is too new, the data are too 
scarce, to allow us to accept as matters of course 
Justice Prentice's " guessing " the price of the 
Corot (p. 330), or Clay's superstition about Tom's 
scarf-pin and the resultant murder (pp. 332-33). 
The melodramatic form was inevitable. 

At what exact point in this first act are you 
aware that the play is to be a melodrama? What 
incident or incidents prove this? 

3. "The Witching Hour" is thoroughly 
American in spirit: the good and bad qualities of 
American drama are easily distinguished from page 
to page. Generalizations in matters theatrical 
nowadays are especially fallible, yet it will not be 
amiss to say that the drama in the United States 
is as a rule conventional, over-sentimental, puri- 
tanical in that it rarely dares go to the root of 
life and comments on it with fearless and out- 
spoken sincerity ; it is, on the other hand, " live," 
moving, interesting as a transcript of the every- 
day externals of life. The dialogue is usually 
good, idiomatic, and clever, although it rarely re- 
veals character. It is nearly always violent, ex- 
treme: melodrama and farce seem to be the favor- 
ite forms, and happy endings are practically 
indispensable. The American dramatist is a 
sentimentalist, although he seldom sentimentalizes 
over the deepest things in life — as a Frenchman 
does — love-scenes are usually short and " snappy '* 



AUGUSTUS THOMAS 241 

— an American dislikes showing his feelings — 
while little children, old mothers, and " pals " in 
" crooked deals," supply more sentimental mate- 
rial than half a dozen love-affairs to a Frenchman 
or a deserted mistress to Schnitzler. 

Notice the first love-scene in " The Witching 
Hour " : the actual proposal and its casual an- 
nouncement (p. 323): 

Clay. — Always you when I think about a real house, 
you bet — a house for me — and you'll be there, won't 
you? (Takes her in his arms.) 

Viola.— Will I? 

Clay. — Yes — say, " I will." 

Viola. — I will. 

(Re-enter Alice and Helen.) 

A lice (astonished) . — Viola ! 
(Alice goes left.) 

Clay. — I've asked her — mother. 

Alice. — Helen, you knew? 

Helen. — Yes. 

Clay (to Alice). — And I asked Jack, too. 

Alice. — You mean 

Clay. — We're engaged — if you say it's all right. 

Alice. — And you — Viola? 

Viola (nodding). — Yes 

Here are the barest outlines ; not a trace of 
passion, and what feeling there is must be ex- 
pressed by the actors. How different from the 
long pages of Donnay's " Lovers " or Schnitzler's 



242 AUGUSTUS THOMAS 

" Liebelei " 1 If the love-making of the average 
American on the stage is strange, the other sort 
of sentimentalizing is none the less unaccountable. 
On page 329, where there should be none of the 
poetry and passion of youth, we find another pro- 
posal — twenty years after the first — where the 
lover appears to be retrospectively sentimental: 

Jack. — Wouldn't it be a pretty finish if you took 
my hand and I could walk right up to the camera 
and say, "I told you so" — ? You know I always 
felt that you were coming back. 

Helen. — Oh, did you.? 

Jack {playfully, and going right center). — Had a 
candle burning in the window every night. 

Helen. — You're sure it wasn't a red light? 

Jack {remonstrating). — Dear Helen! have some 
poetry in your composition. Literally " red light," 
of course — but the real flame was here — {hand on 
breast) — a flickering hope that somewhere — somehow 
— somewhen I should be at rest — with the proud 
Helen that loved and — rode away. 

Helen {almost accusingly). — I — believe — you. 

Jack. — Of course you believe me. 

4. There are many episodes, incidents, and plots 
begun in the first act. Study this act carefully 
and trace each of the important references to 
superstition and telepathy, each of the " love- 
scenes," the murder, etc., and notice how each is 
further developed in the play. Is the first act too 
crowded.'' What is its unity? Who is the villain? 



WILLIAM GILLETTE 

William Gillette was born at Hartford, Connecticut, 
in 1855. He was carefully educated, attended college 
at Yale and Harvard and the Massachusetts Fine Arts 
Institute. " It seems that as far back as nursery days 
the boy owned his miniature theater, and was quick 
in his mechanical inventions." His first appearance 
as an actor was made in 1 875, and he still acts, for the 
most part in his own plays. His first play, " The 
Professor," was written in 1881. 

Like many other American dramatists, Gillette is 
clever, amusing, technically efficient, and interesting, 
but not significant or illuminating. A polished and 
intelligent actor, he knows well the requirements of 
the stage, and for over thirty years he has given the 
public what it wanted. His Civil War plays — espe- 
cially " Secret Service " and " Held by the Enemy " 
— are among the best American plays yet written, 
while " Too Much Johnson " and " Sherlock Holmes," 
the one a farce, the other a detective play, are justly 
estimated as among the best of their type this coun- 
try has seen. 

PLAYS 

The Professor (188il). 

Esmeralda (in collaboration with Mrs. Burnett, 
1881). 

243 



244 WILLIAM GILLETTE 

Held by the Enemy (1886). 

A Legal Wreck (1888). 

Mr. Wilkinson's Widows (1891). 

Ninety Days (1893). 

Too Much Johnson (1894). 

Secret Service (1896). 

Sherlock Holmes (1899). 

Clarice (1905). 

That Little Affair at Boyd's (1908). 

The Robber (1909). 

Among Thieves (1909). 

Electricity (1910). 

There are, besides the above, six or eight adapta- 
tions, translations, and dramatizations, and one vaude- 
ville sketch. 

" Esmeralda," " Held by the Enemy," " Too Much 
Johnson," and " Secret Service " are published by 
Samuel French ; " Electricity " in The Drama, Nov., 

1913- 

References: Montrose J. Moses, "The American 
Dramatist" (Little, Brown); Richard Burton, "The 
New American Drama " (Crowell) ; Charlton An- 
drews, " The Drama of To-day " (Lippincott) ; 
Brander Matthews, " Study of the Drama " (Hough- 
ton Mifflin). — Magazines: Drama, Nov., 1913; Book- 
man, vol. xxxii (p. 59'ii) ; Everybody's, vol. xxxil (p. 
257) ; Outlook, vol. cii (p. 947). 



HELD BY THE ENEMY 

A war drama in five acts. First performed in 1 886. 

" Held by the Enemy " is pure amusement. There 
is no " idea," as in " The Witching Hour," no thesis 
or problem; it is merely a vehicle for the telling of 
an exciting srtory of arms and a love-affair. 

1. There are very few war plays which concern 
themselves solely with the war : nearly always there 
is some personal plot, usually a love-story, running 
through it. One of the most famous of war plays, 
Sardou's "Patrie!" (published in the "Drama 
League Series," Doubleday, Page and Co.), makes 
use of the war element as a dramatic background 
to a personal drama of love and honor; Clyde 
Fitch's " Nathan Hale " is treated in somewhat 
the same manner ; likewise Gillette's " Secret Ser- 
vice." Is " Held by the Enemy " a war play with 
an element of love interest, or a love-story with a 
war background.? 

Why does Gillette start this play with a per- 
sonal episode.'* Why not begin with the military 
part .'' 

2. The influence of the actor on the drama has 
ever been an important consideration to the drama- 

245 



246 WILLIAM GILLETTE 

tist. In his " Study of the Drama " Professor 
Matthews mentions numerous plays which either 
came into existence or were modified to their pres- 
ent form as a result of the dramatist's collabora- 
tion with his actors. He quotes Legouve to the 
effect that " dramatists did well to study the quali- 
ties of the contemporary actors, but . . . there 
was a more constant advantage in availing one's 
self also of the defects of these performers — ' since 
their merits might abandon them, whereas their 
faults would never leave them.' " In Montrose J. 
Moses's " The American Dramatist " the author in 
speaking of Gillette says, " But he is distinctively 
unemotional. Even in simple love scenes ... he 
makes appeal through the sentiment of situation, 
through the exquisite sensitiveness of outward de- 
tail, rather than through romantic attitude and 
heart fervor." This may well account for the lack 
of passion in the present play. Gillette has acted 
in nearly all his own plays, and the principal parts 
must of course be in accord with his own qualities. 
Possibly when Thomas wrote " The Witching 
Hour " he was well aware of the ability and short- 
comings of his actors. 

"Held by the Enemy" and "The Witching 
Hour " must be read rather as skeletons or scena- 
rios upon which the actors must elaborate, than 
rounded wholes, like the plays of Shaw and 
Barrie. American dramatists write with no other 



WILLIAM GILLETTE 24,7 

idea than that of stage presentation, the English 
write both for the stage and the library. 

3. Gillette is a disciple in the " well-made 
plays " school. His melodramas have sometimes 
been criticised for their geometrical symmetry. In 
what way are they symmetrical.? Are they too 
nicely balanced .? Compare them with Brieux's 
" The Three Daughters of M. Dupont " and Her- 
vieu's " The Labyrinth." 

4. Is there any attempt at individual character- 
ization, or are the personages all types? Is the 
actor given much leeway? 

5. It is interesting to compare the utterances of 
practising dramatists on the subject of their art. 
Augustus Thomas expressed himself (p. 238) as 
a playwright of and for the masses, and Gillette's 
statement differs little in essence : " We find that 
public honest and straightforward with us always, 
ever ready to be moved by what is true and lifelike 
and human, provided it be made interesting ; ever 
ready to reject the false and artificial, even though 
it be festooned with literary gems." 



CLYDE FITCH 

Clyde Fitch was born at Elmira, New York, in 
1865. He went to college at Amherst; immediately 
after his graduation he began writing: at first, light 
poems, then short stories and sketches. In 1890 he 
began his career as a dramatist with the romantic 
" Beau Brummel," written for Richard Mansfield. 
He continued his successful career for nearly twenty 
years, dying in 1909, at Chalons-sur-Marne, in France. 

Fitch was a clever and ingenious writer of com- 
edies, picturing for the most part the life of the 
" upper classes " in New York. His facility, his 
power of observation of externals, his constant appli- 
cation to what was curious and amusing in life rather 
than what was significant, added to an inherent lack 
of concentration, prevented his being a man of genius. 
His ideas on the drama have been best expressed by 
himself: " I feel myself very strongly the particular 
value — a value which, rightly or wrongly, I can't help 
feeling inestimable — in a modern play, of reflecting 
absolutely and truthfully the life and environment 
about us ; every class, every kind, every emotion, every 
motive, every occupation, every business, every idle- 
ness ! Never was life so varied, so complex. . . . 
Take what strikes you mosrt, in the hope it will inter- 
est others ; take what suits you most to do — what per- 
haps you can do best, and then do it better. Be 
248 



CLYDE FITCH 249 

truthful, and then nothing can be too big, nothing 
should be too small, so long as it is here and there. 
... If you inculcate an idea into your play, so 
much the better for your play and for you and for 
your audience. In fact, there is small hope for your 
play as a play, if you have not some idea in it, some- 
where and somehow, even if it is hidden. It is some- 
times better for you if it is hidden, but it must of 
course be integral. . . . One should write what one 
sees, but observe under the surface. It is a mis- 
take to look at the reflection of the sky in the water 
of theatrical convention ; instead, look up and into the 
sky of real life itself." 

PLAYS 

Beau Brummel (1890). 

Betty's Finish (1890). 

Frederic Lemaitre (1890). 

A Modern Match (Marriage) (1891). 

Pamela's Prodigy (1891). 

The Social Swim (1893). 

His Grace de Grammont (1894). 

April Weather (1894). 

Gossip (in collaboration with Leo Dietrichstein, 

1895). 
A Superfluous Husband (in collaboration with the 

same, 1897). 
Nathan Hale (1898). 
The Moth and the Flame (1898). 
Ths Cowboy and the Lady (1899). 
Barbara Frietchie (1899). 



S50 CLYDE FITCH 

The Climbers (IPOO). 

Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines (IQOl). 

Lovers* Lane (ipOl). 

The Last of the Dandies (ipoi). 

The Way of the World (IQOl). 

The Girl and the Judge (1901). 

The Stubbornness of Geraldine (1902). 

The Girl with the Green Eyes (1902). 

The Bird in the Cage (1903). 

Her Own Way (1903). 

Glad of It (1903). 

Major Andre (1903). 

The Coronet of a Duchess (1904). 

Granny (1904). 

Cousin Billy (1904). 

The Woman in the Case (1904). 

Her Great Match (1905). 

WOLFVILLE (1905). 

The Girl Who Has Everything (1906). 

The Truth (1906). 

The Straight Road (1906). 

Her Sister (1907). 

Girls (1908). 

A HAppr Marriage (1909). 

The Bachelor (1909). 

The City (1910). 

There are, besides these, a number of adaptations 
and dramatizations. 

" Pamela's Prodigy " is published by Allen, New 
York (out of print) ; " Nathan Hale " is published 
by Baker, Boston. " Barbara Frietchie," " Beau 



CLYDE FITCH 251 

Brummel," " The Climbers," " Captain Jinks of the 
Horse Marines," " The Stubbornness of Geraldine," 
" The Girl with the Green Eyes," " Her Own Way," 
"The Truth" are published by Samuel French; 
" The Truth " is also included in " Chief Contem- 
porary Dramatists" (Houghton MiflBin). 

References: Montrose J. Moses, "The American 
Dramatist" (Little, Brown), " Clyde Fitch: A Trib- 
ute," in Fitch's " A Wave of Life " (Kennerley) ; 
Richard Burton, " The New American Drama " 
(Crowell); L. W. Strang, "Plays and Players of 
the Last Quarter Century "; Charlton Andrews, " The 
Drama To-day " (Lippincott) ; William Archer, 
" Playmaking " (Small, Maynard) ; Brander Mat- 
thews, " A Study of the Drama " (Houghton Mifflin) ; 
Archibald Henderson, " The Changing Drama " 
(Holt); Archie Bell, "The Clyde Fitch I Knew" 
(Broadway Pub. Co.) ; Walter Prichard Eaton, " At 
the New Theater, and Others " (Small, Maynard) ; 
Arthur Ruhl, "Second Nights" (Scribner). — Maga- 
zines: Nation, vol. Ixxxiv (p. 526) ; Independent, vol. 
Ixvii (p. 123) ; Scribner's, vol. Ixvii (p. 490) ; Theatre, 
vol. vii (p. 14) ; Putnam's, vol. vii (p. 244) ; Harper's 
Weekly, vol. xlvi (p. 20); Book Buyer, vol. xvii (p. 
118), vol. xvi (p. 323); Current Literature, vol. xlvii 
(p. 552), vol. xlvii (p. 362) ; Bookman, vol. xxx (p. 
135), vol. xxiii (p. 63) ; Literary Digest, vol. xxxix 
(p. 171), vol. xxxiv (p. 437) ; Dramatic Mirror, Sept. 
18, 1909; Forum, vol. xlv (p. 221) ; Critic, vol. xxxviii 
(p. 225). 

(During the present year, 1915, Little, Brown and 



252 CLYDE FITCH 

Co. are to publish a Memorial Edition of Fitch's 
plays. Three plays, hitherto unpublished, will be 
added: "The City," "Lovers' Lane," and "The 
Woman in the Case." There will be critical and his- 
torical material by Montrose J. Moses and by Fitch 
himself.) 



THE TRUTH 

A play in four acts. First performed in I906. 

" The Truth " is probably Clyde Fitch's most con- 
sistent and best-sustained play. There is in it less of 
the amusingly irrelevant, and more study and observa- 
tion of character than in even " The Girl with the 
Green Eyes " or " The Climbers." The universality 
of theme, unity, and sincerity, is evidenced by the fact 
that the play has been successfully produced in Eng- 
land and in many countries of the Continent. Usually, 
Fitch was wont to rely on his instinct and upon some 
novel device independent of the integral action of the 
play — like the scene in the Vatican in " The Girl 
with the Green Eyes " or on the deck of the steamer 
in " The Stubbornness of Geraldine " — but in " The 
Truth " there is a conscious discarding of the non- 
essential. 

1. Fitch's sense for externals is manifested on 
page 4: 

Mrs. Lindon. — . . . Becky ! One of my oldest 
friends ! One of my bridesmaids ! 

Maura. — What ! 

Mrs. Lindon. — No, she wasn't, but she might have 
been; she was my next choice if any one had backed 
out. 

253 



254 CLYDE FITCH 

This is amusing, and it tells something of one 
character — the speaker. It is a mot de caractere. 
Still, it tells nothing very deep or very significant. 
Later on, Mrs. Linden's character is developed, but 
there is nothing very startling or new that we 
learn of her. In the first act is there any distinct 
or notable bit of information given as to any of 
the characters? What of Becky herself.'* 

As the play progresses, notice by what means 
the character of Becky is built up. Is it through 
situations, by dialogue, or through the conversa- 
tion of others.'' 

2. The lie has ever been a fruitful source of 
dramatic material: Ibsen has dramatized it in most 
of his social dramas ; Henry Arthur Jones — in 
" The Liars " and " The Lie," and Maurice Don- 
nay in " The Free Woman " — have written effect- 
ive pieces around men and women who lie to attain 
certain ends, and fail. Has this play of Fitch's 
points in common as to treatment with any of the 
plays here referred to.'* What is the dramatic, the 
"theatrical," essence of "The Truth".? How 
has the author extracted what is most interesting 
and appealing from his theme? 

Fitch's words (quoted on pp. 248-49 of the pres- 
ent volume) regarding underlying ideas in plays 
are peculiarly apt : " If you inculcate an idea into 
your play so much the better for your play and 
for you and for your audience. ... It is some- 



CLYDE FITCH 255 

times better for you if it is hidden, but it must of 
course be integral ..." Is Fitch's idea hid- 
den.'* Is it integral.? 

3. The American habit of bringing a play to 
a happy ending is a result of the intellectual youth 
of the country. The average audience has not yet 
come to the point where it will unflinchingly ac- 
cept the logical consequences of a situation. 
Eugene Walter in " The Easiest Way " has dared 
to draw his tragic play to its ruthless and only 
possible close, but he succeeded only in spite of this 
fact, by reason of deft craftsmanship. No one 
objects to the happy ending of a happy play; the 
fault lies with the dramatist who begins with a sit- 
uation and characters from which only evil or 
tragedy can come. Bernard Veiller's " Within the 
Law," George Broadhurst's "Bought and Paid 
For," both began with interesting and serious prob- 
lems, but each dramatist, either because he was in- 
capable of sustained thinking and reasoning power 
— which is unlikely — escaped from his main theme, 
and allowed his play to drift on the current of 
amusing but utterly inconsequential circumstances. 
If a dramatist introduces a certain character 
early in the play with the idea of changing the 
mind and spirit of that character, he must motivate 
each action and account for the character at the 
end of the play. If Ibsen wished to show Nora 
as a doll in the first act of " A Doll's House," and 



256 CLYDE FITCH 

a mature and thinking woman in the last, he must 
adduce convincing proofs of the metamorphosis. 
Henry Arthur Jones, in " The Crusaders " and 
" Dolly Reforming Herself," ridicules the attempts 
of would-be reformers to accomplish their ends 
over-night, as it were : the " crusaders," in the one, 
and Dolly and her friends in the other, are sadder 
and wiser at last, but they are no nearer to refor- 
mation than when the curtain first rose. In Her- 
mann Bahr's " Das Konzert " the philandering 
artist will, we are positive, continue to give " con- 
certs " as long as he is so inclined ; in Leo Diet- 
richstein's American version, called " The Con- 
cert," the amiable pianist assures his wife that he 
will " give no more concerts." Very often a drama- 
tist will throw a sop to his exigent audience, but at 
the same time add a " tag " showing that the 
" lived happily ever after " is but the merest con- 
vention. Hubert Henry Davies' " The Mollusc " 
is a case in question : Tom's words, which close the 
play, are : " Were those miracles permanent cures ? 
(Shakes his head.) We're never told! We're 
never told ! " This is legitimate, like the happy 
ending to a fairy-story, but when the inexorable 
logic of life demands truth, and the dramatist de- 
liberately distorts the truth, the play is false. 

Study carefully the last act of " The Truth," 
determining exactly how genuine is Becky's " con- 
version," whether the author intended his audience 



CLYDE FITCH 257 

to accept the denouement, or whether he intended 
the closing lines to put the audience in a good 
humor. Notice, however, the extreme cleverness 
of the end: 

Becky. — You can't forgive me! 

Warder. — We don't love people because they are 
perfect. 

(He takes her two trembling hands in his, and 

she rises.) 

Becky. — Tom ! 

Warder. — We love them because they are them- 
selves. 



WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY 

William Vaughn Moody was born at Spencer, 
Indiana, in 1869- He was educated at Harvard. For 
some years he wrote poems and poetic dramas, while 
he filled the position of professor of English at the 
University of Chicago. " The Great Divide " — 
originally " A Sabine Woman " — was produced in 
1906. " The Faith Healer," a failure, was produced 
three years later. Moody died in 191O. 

Moody is a man of one play, yet so full of promise 
was " The Great Divide," so American in the best 
sense, that his early death cannot but be the source 
of the deepest regret. He had within him the instinct 
of the dramatist, together with the conscience and 
taste of an artist. The poet in him felt the romance 
and beauty of the East and West in America, and he 
combined felicity of language with stirring incidents 
and an interesting if questionable problem. In " The 
Faith Healer " he was led astray by an idea ; still, 
the play was an advance in so far as it showed greater 
unity and a firmer grasp of his idea than did " The 
Great Divide." Moody took American drama where 
Thomas left it, and pointed a way at least to what 
possibilities lay beyond. 

PLAYS 
The Great Divide (1906). 
The Faith Healer (1909). 

258 



WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY 259 

Both these are published in " Poems and Plays of 
William Vaughn Moody," Vol. II (Houghton Mifflin). 
" The Great Divide " is included in " Chief Contem- 
porary Dramatisrts " (Houghton Mifflin). 

References: Montrose J. Moses, "The American 
Dramatist " (Little, Brown) ; Richard Burton, " The 
New American Drama " (Crowell) ; Charlton An- 
drews, " The Drama To-day " (Lippincott) ; William 
Archer, " Playmaking " (Small, Maynard) ; Archi- 
bald Henderson, "The Changing Drama" (Holt); 
Arthur Ruhl, " Second Nights " (Scribner) ; Frank / 
Wadleigh Chandler, " Aspects of Modern Drama " 
(Macmillan) ; " Some Letters of William Vaughn 
Moody " (Houghton Mifflin) ; Edwin Herbert Lewis, 
" William Vaughn Moody " (Chicago Literary Club) ; 
J. M. Manly, Introduction to collected Houghton Mif- 
flin edition. — Magazines: Drama, May, 191 1; Dial, 
vol. xlvii (p. 330), vol. liii (p. 484); Nation, vol. xci 
(p. 352); Independent, vol. Ixxiv (p. 314); Univer- 
sity of Chicago Magazine, vol. v (p. 152); Yale Re- 
view, vol. ii (p. 688); Bookman, vol. xxxii (p. 249). 



THE GREAT DIVIDE 

A play in three acts. First performed in 1906. 

" The Great Divide " is a psychological character- 
study with a Western background during part of the 
action, and its very antithesis — New England — for 
the rest. Its value as an acting play is attested by the 
fact that for at least two years it enjoyed great suc- 
cess in the large cities and on the road, and is still 
a stock favorite. 

1. As in " King Lear," the first act of this play 
contains a climactic scene, after which there is a 
decided fall, a relaxing of dramatic tension, and 
an explanation. The case comes first, then the 
discussion and the problem. In Shakspere's play 
the action rises again to a still higher pitch of ten- 
sion; is this so in " The Great Divide ".'' William 
Archer, in " Playmaking," criticises the play be- 
cause, " after the stirring first act," it " is weak- 
ened by our sense that the happy ending is only 
being postponed by a violent effort. We have been 
assured from the very first — even before Ruth Jor- 
dan has set eyes on Stephen Ghent — that just such 
a rough diamond is the ideal of her dreams . . . 
the author has taken such pains to emphasize the 
fact that these two people are really made for each 
260 



WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY 261 

other, that the answer to the question is not for a 
moment in doubt, and we become rather impatient 
of the obstinate sulkiness of Ruth's attitude." 
The criticism is just enough, but there is a graver 
one: not only is the audience impatient as to the 
psychological development, but the action drags. 
How could the dramatist have remedied the defect? 
2. It is natural that the prose work of a poet 
should bear some impress of his feeling for the 
beauty of language. The style of this play is on 
the whole literary in the dramatic sense: that is, 
it is in accordance with the character of the speak- 
ers. Into the mouth of the refined Ruth the drama- 
tist has legitimately put many beautiful speeches, 
but as these are revelatory of her mind and tem- 
perament they are not out of place. This sense of 
literary effect has been admirably combined with 
the purely theatrical in the first act (pp. 290-91, 
" Chief Contemporary Dramatists ") : 

What a lovely night! Who would ever think to 
call this a desert, this moonlit ocean of flowers ? What 
millions of cactus blooms have opened srince yesterday ! 

And later on ; after she sings the three verses of 
the song: 

Be still, you beauties ! You'll drive me to distrac- 
tion with your color and your odor. I'll take a host- 
age for your good behavior. 



262 WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY 

(She selects a red flower, puts it in the dark mass 
of her hair, and looks out at the open door.) 
What a scandal the moon is making, out there in 
that great crazy world ! Who but me could think of 
sleeping on such a night? 

{She sits down, folds the flowers in her arms, 
and buries her face in them.) 

Add to this the effective contrast of the follow- 
ing scene, and there can remain no doubt that this 
is the work of a man of the theater. 

3. After such an act there could come only an 
anti-climax ; the explanation and development fol- 
lowing the big scene would probably have been 
much more interesting had it not been for the 
graphic and exciting first act. How does the 
author seek to arouse interest and create suspense 
again? Is the end of the second act sufficiently 
tense to force the audience to await impatiently 
the rise of the curtain on the final act? What of 
the last act itself? Is the happy ending logical? 
Compare it with the endings of " Young Mrs. 
Winthrop " and " The Witching Hour." 



PERCY MACKAYE 

Percy Mackaye was born at New York City, in 
1875. He is the son of Steele Mackaye, author of 
" Hazel Kirke." He graduated from Harvard, where 
he was a student under Professor Baker. A poet of 
taste and feeling, he has written a number of poetic 
dramas, a few prose comedies and fantasies, most of 
which have been produced, though none with any con- 
siderable degree of commercial success. 

Mackaye possesses what most American dramatists 
lack: a definite ideal. He lacks what Thomas and 
Fitch and Gillette have to a marked degree: a sense 
of the theater. He writes well, too well in places, 
for his dialogue is often " literary " ; his sense of 
construction is occasionally faulty, and many of his 
plays tend to drag. Still, his influence is beneficial, 
his ideals are srure to bear fruit, and he may yet write 
what he has twice come near to writing: a true Amer- 
ican comedy. " Jeanne D'Arc " and " Sapho and 
Phaon " are good closet dramas, " Mater " is a de- 
lightful prose satire, " Anti-Matrimony " delicate 
high- farce, and " The Scarecrow " nearly a master- 
piece of imaginative writing, while " A Thousand 
Years Ago " — an Oriental fantasy — is as delightful 
as anything of its kind written in recent years. 
Mackaye is also a lecturer and writer on matters 
pertaining to the stage. 

263 



264 PERCY MACKAYE 

PLAYS 

The Canterbury Pilgrims (1903). 

Jeanne D'Arc (1906). 

Fenris the Wolf (1905). 

Sapho and Phaon (1908). 

Mater (1910). 

The Scarecrow (1910). 

Anti-Matrimony (1910). 

Yankee Fantasies (one-act plays) (1911). 

To-morrow (1913). 

A Thousand Years Ago (1914). 

(" The Canterbury Pilgrims " was not produced 
until 1909; "Fenris the Wolf" and "To-morrow" 
have not yet been professionally produced ; some of the 
" Yankee Fantasies " have been privately produced. 
The dates of these plays refer to publication.) 

" Jeanne D'Arc," " Fenris the Wolf," " Sapho 
and Phaon/' " Mater," " The Canterbury Pilgrims," 
and " The Scarecrow " are published by Macmillan ; 
" Yankee Fantasies " by Duffield ; " Anti-Matrimony " 
and " To-morrow " by Stokes ; and " A Thousand 
Years Ago " in the " Drama League Series " by 
Doubleday, Page. " The Scarecrow " is included in 
" Chief Contemporary Dramatists " (Houghton Mif- 
flin). 

References: Montrose J. Moses, " The American 
Dramatist " (Little, Brown) ; Richard Burton, " The 
New American Drama " (Crowell) ; Brander 
Matthews, "A Study of the Drama" (Houghton 
Mifflin) ; Charles Wadleigh Chandler, " Aspects of 



PERCY MACKAYE 265 

Modern Drama" (Macmillan); Charlton Andrews, 
" The Drama To-day " (Lippincott) ; Percy Mackaye, 
" The Playhouse and the Play " (Macmillan), and 
"The Civic Theater" (Kennerley). — Magazines: 
Outlook, vol. Ixxxv (p. 302), vol. cii (p. 953); North 
American, vol. clxxxviii (p. 404) ; Current Literature, 
vol. xlv (p. .554) ; Scribner's, vol. xlvi (p. 28) ; Book- 
man, vol. xxxii (p. 249), vol. xxxvi (p. 12). 



THE SCARECROW 

" A tragedy of the ludicrous." A play in four acts. 
First performed in ipiO. 

" The Scarecrow " is founded upon Hawthorne's 
story of " Feathertop." The play is by no means a 
dramatization, but an independent work of which only 
the skeleton was taken from Hawthorne. Percy Mac- 
kaye's ideas, his literary sense, his dramatic feeling, 
are nowhere so much in evidence as in " The Scare- 
crow " : here is effective drama — no one who saw the 
production in IPIO can doubt it — an interesting theme, 
well worked out, and skilful handling of such exter- 
nals as will attract and hold. 

1. Mackaye was wise in making as direct and 
visible an appeal as possible in his first act: the 
mysterious blacksmith shop, the " horned and 
tailed " devil, the suggestion of witchcraft, all tend 
to create an atmosphere proper for the unfolding 
of the plot and exposition of ideas. The poet does 
not actually begin his play until the external ap- 
peal has been definitely made. 

What dramatic, as distinct from literary, ex- 
pedients are used in this first act to accomplish 
the ends just mentioned.'' 

266 



PERCY MACKAYE 267 

2. The idea of the play is not at first easy to 
define : there is first the " mirror of truth " epi- 
sode, then the Justice Merton and Goody Rickby 
story, and so on. These finally mould themselves 
into an harmonious whole, which eventually yields 
the theme of the play. But each individual thread 
of action is developed in a leisurely manner. In 
the second act, for example, there is none of the 
usual American haste — no " punch," no purely 
theatrical situations: the poet has found a suit- 
able vehicle for drama as well as for poetic 
prose. Does he ever allow his theme or his lik- 
ing for the purely literary to interfere with the 
dramatic development of the story? If so, 
where.'' 

3. The climax at the end of the third act is ac- 
cording to the formulas of the well-made play : in 
its proper place. From the somewhat loose begin- 
ning of the second act, trace the process whereby 
the dramatist has brought his unusual play to a 
usual climactic point. Does he eliminate or relegate 
to the background threads of interest which are not 
so important as the main one — as Jones does in 
" The Liars " — or does he temporarily thrust the 
important ones into the foreground, asking the 
audience to accept it for the time being? 

4. Consider the last act in the light of its ef- 
fectiveness as a stage play; is there too much 
theme, and insufficient action? 



268 PERCY MACKAYE 

Why does Ravensbane die at the end? The last 
two speeches are: 

Richard {bending over him). — Dead! 
Rachel (with an exalted look). — But a man! 

Is this the " Tragedy of the Ludicrous "? 



EDWARD SHELDON 

Edward Sheldon was born at Chicago in 1886. He 
attended college at Harvard, where he was a member 
of Professor Baker's class in dramatic technic, and was 
graduated in 1907. After the production of his first 
play, " Salvation Nell," by Mrs. Fiske, his success was 
assured. 

Sheldon is a brilliant and talented young man with 
true dramatic instinct. His first play, " Salvation 
Nell," is notable by reason of its minute observation 
of externals ; " The Nigger," because of its theme, 
came near to being a significant play ; " The Boss " 
and " The High Road " are less interesting pictures of 
various phases of contemporaneous American life; 
while " Romance," as a story pure and simple, is one 
of the best-made plays of the day. Sheldon is enter- 
prising, and in each of his plays he experiments with 
form. He has a constant tendency toward the melo- 
dramatic, the conventional and the sentimental, but 
his solider gifts afford promise of something truly 
large and typically American. 

PLAYS 

Salvation Nell (1908). 
The Nigger (1909). 
The Boss (1911). 
Princess Zim-Zam (1911). 



270 EDWARD SHELDON 

Egypt (1912). 
The High Road (1912). 
Romance (1913). 

The Song of Songs (based upon the novel of Her- 
mann Sudermann, 1914). 
The Garden of Paradise (1915). 

" The Nigger," " Romance," and " The Garden of 
Paradise " are published separately by Macmillan. 

References: Montrose J. Moses, "The American 
Dramatist " (Little, Brown) ; Richard Burton, " The 
New American Drama " (Crowell) ; Frank Wadleigh 
Chandler, " Aspects of Modern Drama " (Macmillan) ; 
William Archer, " Playmaking " (Small, Maynard) ; 
Clayton Hamilton, "Studies in Stagecraft" (Holt); 
Walter Prichard Eaton, " At the New Theater, and 
Others " (Small, Maynard) ; Charlton Andrews, " The 
Drama To-day" (Lippincott). — Magazines: Current 
Opinion, vol. liv (p. 379) ; Outlook, vol. cii (p. 947) ; 
Bookman, vol. xxx (p. 463), vol. xxxvii (p. 306), vol. 
xl (p. 637) ; New Republic, vol. i (p. 23). 



ROMANCE 

A play in three acts, a prologue, and an epilogue. 
First performed in 1913. 

" Romance " is the most close-knit and logical of 
this dramatist's plays. While the subject-matter is not 
distinctively American, the details, the development, 
and the point of view are indubitably so. 

1. From time to time, and of recent years espe- 
cially, a dramatist has set a play within a play, 
or in some other manner arranged the time-scheme 
of his play, in order to achieve some novelty of 
effect. " Milestones " by Bennett and Knoblauch 
has three acts, the first of which takes place in 
the sixties, the second in the eighties, and the last 
in the year 1912. Sheldon's " The High Road " 
is in five acts, which cover a period of about twenty- 
five years ; George Cohan's dramatization of " The 
Seven Keys to Baldpate " is a play within a play ; 
" The Big Idea," by A. E. Thomas and Clayton 
Hamilton, is still another novelty in stagecraft; 
while " On Trial," by Elmer Reizenstein, tells a 
story in reverse chronological order. 

The value of this transposition of the time- 
scheme usually lies in the novelty, but — and this 
2T1 



272 EDWARD SHELDON 

is especially true in the case of " On Trial " — the 
novelty soon wears off. There a commonplace 
melodramatic incident is made interesting only be- 
cause it is told in the reverse order ; the pleasure 
is felt only in seeing how it is done. Like a 
clever acrobatic feat, once it is over there is no 
desire to see it repeated. Where the device is not 
so novel and involved, as in " Milestones," or where 
it is more legitimately used, as in the plays of 
Cohan, A. E. Thomas, and Clayton Hamilton, more 
attention can be paid to the play itself. But as a 
matter of fact the unfolding of the past has been 
much more skilfully and naturally accomplished in 
many of the plays of Ibsen, and especially in Hjal- 
mar Bergstrom's powerful play, " Karen Borne- 
man." " Ghosts " and " Rosmersholm " accom- 
plish practically the same ends as does " On Trial," 
only there is no visible return to the past : it is un- 
folded by means of dialogue and its results are made 
manifest in the present. " On Trial " interests 
us only when the past is visibly returned to, with 
the result that it is made too vivid, and the proper 
perspective lost. The past cannot be so vivid as 
the present. In " Karen Borneman " the past rises 
up gradually; in fact, there is a great deal of 
exposition in the last act, but as the facts are 
made known as they would be in life itself, as a 
result of certain other facts, the audience keeps 
pace with the characters, and is never " ahead of 



EDWARD SHELDON 273 

the game." The only criticism to be made against 
such plays as " On Trial " is that their very nov- 
elty is soon outworn, and that it is above all 
useless. 

" Romance " is the visualization of a story of 
the past. But as that story is the play, the pro- 
logue may be taken as incidental: as a frame for 
the principal action. However, had the story in 
the prologue been made more important, the intru- 
sion of the old man's story would have thrown 
into exaggerated relief what should have been only 
a detail. 

2. It has already been remarked that one of the 
vices of American drama is its sentimentality, 
and Edward Sheldon has not yet been able to 
escape it. Needless to say the very title of the 
play implies sentiment, and its theme demands 
vigorous treatment. Yet, on the stage or off, sen- 
timent is sentiment, and any exaggeration is false. 
In the third act we find the following speech of 
Tom: 

. . . Don't you hear the midnight cry : " Behold 
The Bridegroom cometh. Go ye out to meet Him ! " 
Don't you see Him coming from the wilderness like a 
pillar of smoke, perfumed with myrrh and frankin- 
cense? His eyes are as a flame of fire, and on His 
head are many crowns. He wears a garment dipped 
in blood and on it a name is written, Lord of Lords 
and King of Kings ! Hark ! He is outside knocking at 



274 EDWARD SHELDON 

your door ! Rose of Sharon, Lily of the Valley, cease 
your slumber, for the hour has come ! 

These words, to be sure, are put into the mouth 
of the passionate young rector, but it is a question 
whether the author was not striving to attain an 
effect independent of what the logic of the situa- 
tion required. In " The High Road " he at- 
tempted this, to the detriment of the truth of the 
situation. 

Sheldon has always been lavish in the use of 
crowds, brass bands, and the like. These are of 
course always effective, but their constant use 
tends to weaken the effect of the play. At the 
end of " The Nigger," in the big act of " The 
Boss," and at the end of "The High Road," 
there are " mobs outside " ; what of these devices 
in " Romance ".? The touch of melodrama which 
often nearly spoils an otherwise dramatic scene 
is painfully evident in the last act of the present 
play: 

(Pause. They are both breathing deeply. Tom, 
biting his underlip and never taking his eyes off her 
face, is crawling softly up on her other side, crouched 
like a beast prepared to spring upon her unaware. 
Then, in the silence, just as he is ready to leap, is 
heard the first note of the midnight bell. The full, 
deep tones strike solemnly and. slowly up to twelve. 
Then, as it continues, the sound of a choir of men's 



EDWARD SHELDON 275 

voices, sturdy and sweet, is heard from far away, 
gradually growing nearer. They are playing and sing- 
ing the old Lutheran hymn " Ein' feste Burg." As 
Tom hears them, he gradually straightens and his old 
look and manner come back to him. He goes rather 
unsteadily. He stands for a moment looking out; then 
turns to Rita, passing his hand over his forehead as 
one recovering from a dream.) 

Add to this the phonograph playing Caval- 
lini's song! 

3. Sheldon is rarely mistaken as to the effect 
he wishes to produce, and his plays are full of 
minor points which are admirably done : the quaint 
incident in " The Boss " where the principal char- 
acter buys the brooch and examines it; the scene 
in the Governor's office in " The High Road " ; 
most of the first act of " Salvation Nell," are 
peculiarly Sheldonian. These touches go far to 
create charm and build up character. What ex- 
amples are there in "Romance"? How far is 
the dramatist dependent upon them for the crea- 
tion of his larger effects? 



EUGENE WALTER 

Eugene Walter was born in 1876. He did re- 
porting on a Cleveland newspaper, then joined 
the New York Sun, and served in the army. For 
some years he was advance agent for a number of 
theatrical companies. For the past eight or nine 
years he has devoted himself exclusively to the writ- 
ing of plays. 

Walter is a born man of the theater. His plays 
are for the most part melodramatic situations a la 
Bernstein, well developed, skilfully constructed, em- 
ploying an American background as a matter of 
course. He is little concerned with ideas or charac- 
terization. He is journalistic, violent, and nearly 
always interesting. His violence leads him at times to 
excesses, but it sometimes drives him relentlessly into 
powerful and gripping situations. " Paid in Full " 
and " The Easiest Way," in particular, are fearless in 
their logic, and the author has fortunately not given 
in to the temptation to do violence to the logic of 
situation and character by making happy endings. 
" Fine Feathers " is uneven, but contains in the last 
two acts many scenes of high merit. Walter makes 
no pretension to " uplifting " the drama, he possesses 
no literary sense, his ideal is solely that of supply- 
ing the stage with dramatic stories. 

276 



EUGENE WALTER 277 

PLAYS 

The Undertow (1907). 

Sergeant James (1907). 

Paid in Full (1907). 

The Wolf (1908). 

The Easiest Way (1908). 

Just a Wife (1910). 

Boots and Saddles (from "Sergeant James," 1910). 

The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (191I). 

Fine Feathers (1912). 

None of the above has been published in play 
form, although " The Easiest Way " has been " novel- 
ized " (by A. Hornblow; G. W. Dillingham, pub- 
lisher). 

(Note: Walter is another dramatist, like Heme and 
Cohan and Klein, whose plays, not being obtainable, 
cannot be studied in connection with the present out- 
line. The novelization, however, contains practically 
all the dialogue, and the play itself is in some of the 
larger public libraries.) 

References: Montrose J. Moses, "The American 
Dramatist " (Little, Brown) ; Richard Burton, " The 
New American Drama " (Crowell) ; Charlton An- 
drews, " The Drama To-day " (Lippincott) ; Archi- 
bald Henderson, "The Changing Drama" (Holt). — • 
Magazines: Harper's Weekly, vol. lii (p. 28); Cur- 
rent Literature, vol. liii (p. 443) ; Bookman, vol. xxxii 
(p. 294). 



THE EASIEST WAY 

A play in four acts. First performed in I9O8. 

A comparison of " The Easiest Way " with Pinero's 
" Iris " immediately suggests itself, and a good deal 
might be said on the subject. However, whether Wal- 
ter was acquainted with the English play or not, he 
has treated a similar theme in a rather dissimilar man- 
ner. Pinero's story is occasionally subtle, always in- 
genious ; Walter's is direct, brutal, though undoubtedly 
stronger. Pinero's woman is universal and possibly 
lacking therefore in recognizably familiar touches. 
Walter's is definitely " human," particular, American. 

The style of dialogue in " Iris " is rarely coUo- 
quial ; that in " The Easiest Way " is almost too A 
much so. On page 9 (of the private edition of 
the play) Will says: 

Yes, it's been a mighty good two years for me. 
I was always proud to take you around, because I 
think you one of the prettiest things in New York 
(Laura crosses R., and girlishly jumps into armchair), 
and that helps some, and you're always jolly, and 
you never complained. You always spent a lot of 
money, but it was a pleasure to see you spend it ; and 
then you never offended me. Most women offend men 

278 



EUGENE WALTER 279 

by coming around untidy and sort of unkempt, but 
somehow you always knew the value of your beauty, 
and you always dressed up. I always thought that 
maybe some day the fellow would come along, grab 
you, and make you happy in a nice way, but I thought 
that he'd have to have a lot of money. You know 
you've lived a rather extravagant life for five years, 
Laura. It won't be an easy job to come down to cases 
and suffer for the little dainty necessities you've been 
used to. 

An interesting contrast is afforded in a com- 
parison of the endings of the two plays (see p. 22, 
present volume). Walter ends his play as follows: 

Laura (suddenly arousing herself, and with a de- 
fiant voice). — No, I'm not. I'm going to stay right 
here. (Annie crosses and opens trunk L., takes out 
handsome dress, crosses, hangs it over back of arm- 
chair R. C, crosses up to hat trunk, takes out hat. 
Laura takes it from her, crosses to trunk L., starts to 
unpack it.) Open these trunks, take out thos'e clothes, 
get me my prettiest dreg's. Hurry up. (She goes be- 
fore the mirror.) Get my new hat, dress up my body, 
and paint up my face. It 's all they've left of me. 
(To herself.) They've taken my soul away with 
them. 

Annie (in a happy voice). — Yassum, yassum. 

Laura (who is arranging her hair). — Doll me up, 
Annie. 

Annie. — Yuh goin' out. Miss Laura? 



280 EUGENE WALTER 

Laura. — Yes. I'm going to Rector's to make a hit, 
and to hell with the rest. 

{At this moment the hurdy-gurdy in the street, 
presumably immediately under her window, begins to 
play the tune of " Bon-Bon Buddie, My Chocolate 
Drop." There is something in this rag-time melody 
which is particularly and peculiarly suggestive of the 
low life, the criminality and prostitution that consti- 
tute the night excitement of that section of New York 
City known as the Tenderloin. The tune, its associa- 
tion, is like spreading before Laura's eyes a pano- 
rama of the inevitable depravity that awaits her. She 
is torn from every ideal that she so weakly endeavored 
to grasp, and is thrown into the mire and slime at the 
very moment when her emancipation seems to be as- 
sured. The woman with her flashy dress in one arm 
and her equally exaggerated type of picture hat in the 
other, is nearly prostrated by the tune and the realiza- 
tion of the future as it is terrifically conveyed to her. 
The negress, in the happiness of serving Laura in her 
questionable career, picks up the melody and hums it 
as she unpacks the finery that has been put away in 
the trunk.) 

Laura (with infinite grief, resignation, and hopeless^ 
ness). — O God — O my God. (She turns and totters 
toward the bedroom. The hurdy-gurdy continues, 
with the negress accompanying it.) 
A slow curtain. 



NOTES 

The theatrical situation in America is a peculiar 
one: many of the most successful dramatists re- 
fuse to publish their plays in book form, and a 
number of those who under a less rigid system of 
managerial policy would have ample opportunity 
of seeing their plays produced have been forced 
to resort to publication of plays which are by 
reason of their subject-matter, or because of some 
external and practical reason, kept from the pro- 
fessional stage. While the author has consistently 
held to the belief that the play which cannot be 
acted is not a play, and that the " closet-drama " 
is a form apart, he still believes that owing to local 
conditions certain plays which have not received 
the sanction of stage-presentation are legitimate 
examples of American tendencies. The following 
pages contain a few suggestions for the study of 
certain plays of the sort referred to, as well as 
further brief outlines for three or four dramatists 
of the other kind: those who will not allow their 
plays to be published. 

GEORGE MIDDLETON 

George Middleton is an. earnest idealist, who 
has published three volumes of one-act plays and 



282 NOTES 

one three-act comedy.* In his introduction to 
" Possession," his latest volume, he says : " The 
dramatist . . . who prefers to follow the im- 
pulse within him, irrespective of whether or not his 
play may have a wide popular appeal, has had little 
encouragement. This is obviously so where his 
subjects are quietly intimate and where the clash 
of character is subtly mental or emotional; espe- 
cially when one compares such plays with those 
others, no more dramatic in essence, which natu- 
rally command a greater audience because the 
action is physical, external, and more readily com- 
prehended." 

Middleton, whose technical skill is seen in 
his dramatizations — " The House of a Thousand 
Candles " and " Barriers Burned Away " — as well 
as in his own plays, has tried to make the one-act 
play a vehicle for the ideas which underlie the 
great movements of the day. For the most part he 
has chosen to depict various aspects of the feminist 
question, and his outspoken thoughts always de- 
mand thoughtful consideration. Middleton may 
be criticised on the score of occasional convention- 
ality in the matter of dialogue and perhaps a too 
earnest attitude toward his " message." " I am 
using," Middleton once said in an interview, " my 
little one-act plays to suggest the larger drama in 

*" Embers," "Tradition," "Possession," and "Nowa- 
days " are all published by Holt. 



NOTES . 283 

the background. I want each play to picture 
either some vital past experience or some inevitable 
possibility which may arise. I seldom deal in final- 
ities, since no situation in life is without its further 
potentialities." Here is Middleton the idealist. 
In two of his short plays his method may be 
studied: "Tradition " (in the volume under that 
name) and "The Groove" (in "Possession"); 
the first is the depiction of one aspect of a world- 
old struggle between radicalism and conservatism ; 
the second is one of this dramatist's truest bits of 
characterization. Here is one of his best plays: 
it shows distinct possibilities, which should be 
developed and incorporated into a long play. 
" Nowadays," a comedy in three acts, suffers as 
most thesis plays do, from an overdose of thesis, 
but again the author's sincerity, his idealism, his 
sense of dramatic construction, redeem it from 
the realm of the purely didactic. 

JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY 

Josephine Preston Peabody (Mrs. Marks) has 
achieved success with her poetic play, " The 
Piper," * which was produced by Winthrop Ames 
at the New Theater in New York. Miss Peabody 

'Author also of "Marlowe" (1901), "The Wings" 
(1905), and "The Wolf of Gubbio" (1914), all published 
by Houghton Miflflin. 



284 . NOTES 

is a poetess of charm and strength, but her plays, 
with the single exception of " The Piper," are more 
effective when read than seen. If the theater and 
the audience had given more encouragement to 
writers of poetic drama, it is likely that Miss Pea- 
body would have written more plays and less lyrics. 

OLIVE TILFORD DARGAN 

Olive Tilford Dargan possesses poetic gifts and 
some knowledge of stage requirements. " The 
Shepherd " and " The Mortal Gods " might, with 
skilful and sympathetic stage-management, prove 
dramatic on the stage. 

HARRY BENRIMO AND GEORGE C. 
HAZELTON 

" The Yellow Jacket " * is one of the most 
charming and original of modern American plays. 
Its charm and originality, however, militated 
against it as a popular success, although it called 
forth unstinted praise from nearly all the critics 
of the country. 

PERCY MACKAYE 

Percy Mackaye has written closet dramas as 
well as acting plays : " Saint Louis, a Masque." 
" Sanctuary, a Bird Masque," " A Garland for 
* Published by Bobbs-Merrill. 



NOTES 285 

Sylvia," "Fenris the Wolf," and " Sapho and 
Phaon " are written rather to be read than to 
be acted. 



Some of the following dramatists would have 
separate chapters devoted to them, were their plays 
available, but so long as they are withheld, a brief 
summary must for the present suffice: 

DAVID BELASCO 

Probably the most prominent figure in the the- 
atrical world of the past quarter-century, both as 
a dramatist and producer, is David Belasco.* As 
a dramatist, he should be considered rather as a 
skilful and occasionally inspired collaborator; as 
a producer, a careful, painstaking, and yet illumi- 
nating artist. He was the first in this country who 
studied stage-effects down to the minutest detail ; 
so closely has he applied himself to this end that 
he has outstripped himself and become so engrossed 
in external effects that he has lost sight of general 
values, A " Belasco set " is ordinarily praised for 
its marvelous arrangement of minuticB — the first 
act of " The Return of Peter Grimm " is the 
classic example — and credit should be given 
where it is due: this producer is a master of illu- 
sion. However, illusion is often substituted in his 

* " May Blossom " (Samuel French) is his only published 
play. 



286 NOTES 

productions to the detriment of the play. Often 
this is fortunate, for many of the plays Belasco 
has produced have little else to recommend them 
but the setting. One of the sensations of " The 
Governor's Lady " was the exact reproduction of a 
" Childs' " restaurant ! One might as well go to 
see " The Garden of Allah " because of the real 
sand and the real camels ! The genius of the man 
is seen in one act from " The Darling of the Gods," 
where the suggestion of unseen action in the thick 
of a bamboo jungle is legitimately thrilling. Be- 
lasco's plays — or rather those in which he has 
worked over the ideas of others — are on the whole 
melodramatic and sentimental : he is a past master 
in the art of creating a thrill. The long-lost child, 
death-bed scenes, the deserted sweetheart, the mys- 
terious drop of blood, soft music, are a few among 
the many effects which he has on tap, so to speak. 
"Zaza," "The Heart of Maryland," "Madame 
Butterfly," " Du Barry," " The Girl of the Golden 
West," collaborations and adaptations, at once 
call up images of effective mounting, and com- 
pelling if at times exaggerated dramatic stories. 

GEORGE ADE 

George Ade, who suddenly sprang into fame in 
the early years of this century with his comic 
operas and his plays, is now seldom heard of. It 



NOTES 287 

appears that this brilliant and amusing young 
dramatist has either decided to abandon the stage 
and apply himself to work of another nature, as 
he once declared he would, or that he has written 
himself out. "The College Widow," "The 
County Chairman," and " Father and the Boys " 
are genuine if eccentric and exaggerated comedies 
of American life in which types are created, in the 
author's words, " in such a manner as to increase 
our self-respect and to give us a new insight into 
our characteristics as a people." 

GEORGE M. COHAN 

George M. Cohan, actor, manager, composer, 
and playwright, is essentially typical of Broadway 
and the Broadway spirit in America. His musical 
comedies, his farces, and his own acting belong to 
what Walter Prichard Eaton termed the " comedy 
of bad manners " ; they are ingenious, always 
amusing, often exaggerated, pictures of American 
city life. Cohan can draw types, invent capital 
situations, but he has yet to prove that he can 
construct a full-length play which shall interest 
and amuse from beginning to end. He is a drama- 
tist of externals. Yet withal, he is a figure of 
prominence, for he reflects an important side of 
the American nature. 



288 NOTES 

GEORGE H. BROADHURST 

George H. Broadhurst is a popular playwright 
who has utilized the business and political elements 
in our daily life. Like Charles Klein, he uses the 
great political and business motifs only for back- 
ground, as if he were afraid or unable to cope with 
problems of so momentous a nature. " The Man 
of the Hour " is an amusing melodrama ; " Why 
Smith Left Home " * and " What Happened to 
Jones " * are amusing farces. " Bought and Paid 
For " had immense dramatic possibilities, but again 
the playwright avoided the issue. 

WILLIAM C. DE MILLE 

William C. De Mille, with "The Warrens of 
Virginia," " Strongheart," * and " The Woman," 
shows himself a follower of Belasco. He has an 
innate sense of the theater, he can write effective 
and moving melodrama, but like most of his fellow- 
workers, he makes use of business, politics — true 
American subjects — only as background. " The 
Woman," however, deserves especial notice as a 
well-constructed drama, consistently thought out 
and well written. 

• Published by Samuel French.— DeMille's " Food " and 
" In 1999 " are also published by French. 



NOTES 289 

JOSEPH MEDILL PATTERSON 

" Rebellion " comes as near to being an Ameri- 
can play of ideas as any of the day, but either 
through lack of experience or, what is more prob- 
able, judgment, the play somehow missed fire. 
Like the same author's " The Fourth Estate," it 
is earnest and sincere, though there is in it a 
regrettable tendency toward the melodramatic. 

LANGDON MITCHELL 

" The New York Idea " * is a conventional but 
witty and clever comedy of manners, one of the 
few which this country has produced. Mitchell is 
practically the only dramatist (with the exception 
of Fitch) who is able and willing to satirize " high 
society " in America. " The New Marriage " 
(written for Mrs. Fiske, as were " The New York 
Idea " and " Becky Sharp ") was good as to idea, 
but fell far short of being a unified and interesting 
comedy. 

CHARLES KLEIN 

" The Lion and the Mouse " is among the first 

of the more recent American plays to utilize the 

theme of " high finance," the investigations into 

which were at the time causing widespread unrest. 

♦Published by Walter Baker (Boston). 



290 NOTES 

While the play is marred by a distortion of facts 
and ideas, it is, none the less, an earnest attempt. 
It is to be regretted that in his other plays Charles 
Klein used such pertinent and interesting themes 
as police-court justice and the evils of metropoli- 
tan life and that in the department store, only as 
background. " The Third Degree," " The Gam- 
blers," and " Maggie Pepper " fall far short of 
their infinite possibilities. Lately Charles Klein 
went to live in England ; when he left he said that 
the American dramatist must get away from his 
own country in order to gain a better perspective. 
It is hoped that Klein will, as he can do, take his 
art a little more seriously, and make use of his un- 
doubted gifts in a play which shall be workman- 
like and significantly American. 



RACHEL CROTHERS 

" A Man's World " * is an attractive and touch- 
ing picture of New York life. Miss Crothers has 
done notable work in this play and in " The Three 
of Us," " The Herfords," and " Myself, Bettina." 
Like other woman dramatists in America (Mar- 
garet Mayo, Eleanor Gates, Mary Roberts Rine- 
hart, and Alice Brown), there is a certain conven- 
tionality both in the treatment of the theme and in 

* Published by Badger, in the " American Dramatists' 
Series." 



NOTES 291 

the development of human character, but a note 
of sincerity and a certain fidelity to external de- 
tails allow one to hope that this dramatist will 
make further use of her talents. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

General Reference Works on the Drama, its Theory, 
Technic, and History: 
Andrews, Charlton. 

The Drama To-day. Lippincott. 
Archer, William. 

Playmaking, a Manual of Craftsmanship. 
Small, Maynard. 
Baker, George P. 
The Technique of the Drama. Houghton Mif- 
flin. 
Burton, Richard. 

How to See a Play. Macmillan. 
Caffin, Charles H. 
The Appreciation of the Drama. Doubleday, 
Page. 
Can NAN, Gilbert. 

The Joy of the Theater. Dutton. 
Carter, Huntly. 

The New Spirit in Drama and Art. Kennerley. 
Chandler, Frank Wadleigh. 
Aspects of Modern Drama. Macmillan. 
The Contemporary Drama of France. Little, 
Brown. 
Cheney, Sheldon. 
The New Movement in the Theater. Kenner- 
ley. 

^93 



294 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Clark, Barrett H. 
The Continental Drama of To-day. Holt. 
European Theories of the Drama. Stewart & 

Kidd. 
Contemporary French Dramatists. Stewart & 

Kidd. 

Courtney, W. L. 
The Idea of Tragedy. Brentano. 
Old Saws and Modern Instances. Dutton. 

Craig, Gordon. 

On the Art of the Theater. Sergei. 
The Theater — Advancing. Little, Brown. 
Towards a New Theater. Dutton. 

Freytag, Gustav. 
The Technique of the Drama. Griggs. 

Fyles, Franklin. 

The Theater and Its People. Doubleday, Page. 

Hale, Edward Everett, Jr. 

Dramatists of To-day. Holt. 
Hamilton, Clayton, 

The Theory of the Theater. Holt. 

Studies in Stagecraft. Holt. 

Problems of the Playwright. Holt. 

Seen on the Stage. Holt. 
Henderson, Archibald, 

The Changing Drama. Stewart & Kidd. 

European Dramatists. Stewart & Kidd. 
Hopkins, Arthur. 

How's Your Second Act? Knopf, 
Irving, Henry, 

The Drama, Tait, New York, 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 295 

Irving, H. B. 

The Drama. Page. 

Lewisohn, Ludwig. 

The Modern Drama. Huebsch. 

Matthews, Brander. 

The Development of the Drama. Scribner, 
A Study of the Drama. Houghton Mifflin. 
The Principles of Playwriting. Scribner. 

Meredith, George. 

An Essay on Comedy. Scribner. 

Moderwell, Hiram Kelly. 

The Theater of To-day. Lane. 
MoNKHOusE, Allan. 

Books and Plays. Lane. 
Palmer, John. 

Comedy. Doran. 

The Censor and the Theaters. Kennerley. 

The Future of the Theater. Bell, London. 
Phelps, William Lyon. 

The Twentieth Century Theater. 
Price, William T. 

The Technique of the Drama. Brentano. 

The Analysis of Play Construction and Dra- 
matic Principles. W. T. Price. 
Rolland, Romain. 

The People's Theater. Holt. 
Shipman, Louis Evan. 

The True Adventures of a Play. Kennerley. 
Strang, Lewis C. 

Plays and Players of the Last Quarter Century. 
Page. 



296 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Thorndike, Ashley H. 

Tragedy. Houghton Mifflin. 
Vaughan, C. E. 

Types of Tragic Drama. Macmillan. 

WoODBRIDGE, ELIZABETH. 

The Drama, Its Law and Technique. Allyn 
and Bacon. 

English and Irish Drama: 
Archer, William. 

About the Theater. Unwin. 

English Dramatists of To-day. Sampson Low. 

Study and Stage. Wessels. 

Masks or Faces? Longmans. 

Real Conversations. Heinemann. 
BoRSA, Mario. 

The English Stage of To-day. Lane. 
Boyd, E. A. 

Ireland's Literary Renaissance. Lane. 

The Contemporary Drama of Ireland. Little, 
Brown. 
Dickinson, T. H. 

The Contemporary Drama of England. Little, 
Brown. 
Dukes, Ashley. 

Modern Dramatists. Sergei. 

FiLON, AUGUSTIN. 

The English Stage. Dodd, Mead. 
George, W. L. 

Dramatic Actualities. Sidgwick and Jackson. 
Gregory, Lady Augusta. 

Our Irish Theater. Putnam. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 297 

Howe, P. P. 

Dramatic Portraits. Kennerley. 
The Repertory Theater. Kennerley. 

Jones, Henry Arthur. 

Renascence of the English Drama. Macmillan. 
The Foundations of a National Drama. Doran. 
The Theater of Ideas. Doran. 

Kennedy, J. M. 
Modern English Literature. Stephen Swift, 
London. 

Krans, Horatio Sheafe. 
William Butler Yeats and the Irish Literary 
Revival. Doubleday, Page. 

McCarthy, Desmond. 
The Court Theater. A. H. Bullen, Stratford-on- 
Avon. 

Moore, George. 
Hail and Farewell. Appleton. (3 vols.) 
Impressions and Opinions. Brentano. 

Oliver, D. E. 
The English Stage. John Ouseley, London. 

Weygandt, Cornelius. 

Irish Plays and Playwrights. Houghton Mifflin. 

Yeats, William Butler. 

Ideas of Good and Evil. Macmillan. 
The Cutting of an Agate. Macmillan. 

Collected Dramatic Criticism: 
Archer, William. 
The Theatrical World. (5 vols.) Walter Scott, 
London. 



298 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Grein, J. T. 

Dramatic Criticism. John Long, London, 1899. 
Premieres of the Year. Macqueen, London, 

1900. 
Dramatic Criticism. Greening, London, 1901. 
Dramatic Criticism. Evelyn Nash, London, 

1904. 

Montague, C. E. 

Dramatic Values. Macmillan. 

Scott, Clement. 

Drama of Yesterday and To-day. (2 vols.) 
Macmillan. 

Shaw, Bernard. 

Dramatic Opinions and Essays. (2 vols.) 
Brentano. 

E. F. S[pence]. 
Our Stage and Its Critics. Methuen, London. 

Symons, Arthur. 

Plays, Acting, and Music. Dutton. 

Titterton, W. R. 

From Theater to Music Hall. Stephen Swift, 
London. 

Walbrook. 

Nights at the Play. Ham-Smith, London. 

Walkley, a. B. 

Frames of Mind. Richards, London. 
The Drama and Life. Brentano. 
Playhouse Impressions. Unwin, London. 
Dramatic Criticism. Murray, London. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 299 

Dictionaries^ Year-Books, etc.: 

Adams, William D. 

A Dictionary of the Drama, A to G, (English 
and American). Lippincott. 

Boston Book Co. (Publishers.) 
Bulletin of Bibliography. 
Modern Drama and Opera, a reading list. 

Brown, Frank C. 
A Selective List of Essays and Books about the 
Drama and the Theater. Drama League of 
America. 

Brown, T. Allston. 

History of the New York Stage (1732-1901). 
Dodd, Mead. (3 vols.) 

Carson, Lionel. 
The Stage Year Book. (Appears annually.) 
London. 

Clarence, Reginald. 

The Stage Cyclopedia. London. 

Clark, Barrett H. 
Representative One-Act Plays by English and 
Irish Authors. Little, Brown. 

Dickinson, Thomas H., Editor. 

Chief Contemporary Dramatists. Houghton 
Mifflin. (Contains twenty modern plays and 
brief reading lists on Wilde, Pinero, Jones, 
Galsworthy, Barker, Yeats, Synge, Lady 
Gergory, Fitch, Moody, Thomas, and Mac- 
kaye.) 



300 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

HiNEs, Dixie; and Hanaford, Harry Pres- 

COTT. 

Who's Who in Music and Drama. Hanaford, 
New York (1914). 

Loving, Pierre and Shay, Frank. 

Fifty Contemporary One-Act Plays. Stewart & 
Kidd. (Satisfies a long-felt want for a handy 
collection of the choicest plays produced by 
the art theaters all over the world. It is a 
complete repertory for a little theater; a vol- 
ume for the study of the modern drama, a 
representative collection of the world's best 
short plays.) 

Mayorga, Margaret. 

Representative One-Act Plays by American 
Authors. Little, Brown. 

MosES, Montrose J, 

Representative British Dramas. Little, Brown. 

Parker, John, 
Who's Who in the Theater. Isaac Pitman, 
London. 

Pence, James Harry (compiler). 
The Magazine and the Drama, an index. 
(The Dunlap Society.) 

QuiNN, A. H. 

Representative American Plays. Century Co. 

Roden, Robert F. 
Later American Plays (i 831-1900). (The Dun- 
lap Society.) 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 301 

American Drama: 
Anonymous. 
The Truth About the Theater. Stewart & Kidd. 

Andrews, Charlton. 
The Drama To-day. Lippincott. 

Belasco, David. 

The Theater Through its Stage Door. Harper's. 

Burton, Richard. 
The New American Drama. Crowell. 

Chandler, Frank Wadleigh. 
Aspects of Modern Drama. Macmillan. 

Cheney, Sheldon. 
The New Movement in the Theater. Kennerley. 

Crawford, Mary Caroline. *^ 

The Romance of the American Theater. Little, 
Brown. 

Dickinson, T. H. 
The Case of American Drama. Houghton, 

Mifflin. 
The Insurgent Theater. Huebsch. 

Frohman, Daniel. 

Memories of a Manager. Doubleday, Page. 

Goldman, Emma. 
The Social Significance of the Modern Drama. 
Badger. 

Hapgood, Norman. 
The Stage in America (i 897-1900). Macmillan. 



302 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

HoRNBLOW, Arthur. 

A History of the Theater in America. Lippin- 
cott. 

Mackaye, Percy. 

The Playhouse and the Play. Macmillan. 
The Civic Theater. Kennerley. 

Matthews, Brander. 

A Study of the Drama. Houghton Mifflin. 
Inquiries and Opinions. Scribner. 
The Historical Novel and Other Essays. Scrib- 
ner. 

Moderwell, Hiram Kelley. 
The Theater of To-day. Lane. 

MosES, Montrose J. 
The American Dramatist. Little, Brown. 

Collected Criticism: 

Eaton, Walter Prichard. 

The New Theater, and Others. Small, May- 

nard. 
The American Stage of To-day. Small, May- 

nard. 
Plays and Players. Stewart & Kidd. 

Hamilton, Clayton. 

Studies in Stagecraft. Holt. 
Problems of the Playwright. Holt. 
Seen on the Stage. Holt. 

Matthews, Brander. 

Books and Plays. Scribner. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 303 

Nathan, George Jean. 

Mr. George Jean Nathan Presents. Knopf. 
The Popular Theater. Knopf. 
Comedians All. Knopf. 

NiRDLINGER, ChARLES F. 

Masques and Mummers. De Witt, New York. 

RuHL, Arthur. 
Second Nights. Scribner. 

Winter, William. 
The Wallet of Time. (2 vols.) Moffat, Yard. 
Other Days. Moffat, Yard. 
Shadows of the Stage. (3 vols.) Macmillan. 
The Life and Art of Richard Mansfield. 
(2 vols.) Moffat, Yard. 



INDEX 



Abbey Theater, The, 198, 

208 
Ade, George, 286 
"Admirable Crichton, The," 

Barrie, 171 
iEschylus, 125 
" Alias Jimmy Valentine," 

Armstrong, 17 . 
" Amants " (" Lovers "), 

Donnay, 112, 241 
American Drama, 219-291. 
" American Dramatist, The," 

Moses, 231, 237, 246 
" Ames ennemies, Les," Loy- 

son, 82 
Ames, Winthrop, 283 
" Amoureuse," Porto-Riche, 

117, 118 
*' Analysis of Play Con- 
struction and Dramatic 

Principle," Price, 12 
" Anathema," Andreyeff, 81 
AndreyefF, Leonid, quoted, 

163-164 
" Anti-Matrimony," Mac- 

kaye, 263 
"Ap6tre, L'," Loyson, 82 
" Aran Islands, The," Synge, 

194-195 
Archer, William, vii, 3, 12, 

14, 36, 64; quoted on 

"Chains," 162-163; quoted 

on "Great Divide, The," 

260-261 
" Aristocracy," Howard, 

219, 220, 227 
Aristotle, 12, 84 
" Arizona," Thomas, 52, 234 
** Arms and the Man," Shaw, 

66, 77, 78 



Arnold, Matthew, 29, 99 

Asides, 75, 223-225 

" As the Leaves," Giacosa, 
10 

"As You Like It," Shake- 
speare, 204 

" Atalanta in Calydon," 
Swinburne, 99 

Atmosphere, 157-158, 196 

" At the Mitre," Barker, 91. 

" Autobiography of a Play," 
Howard, 226 

" Awakening of Spring, 
The," Wedekind, 120 

Baker, Elizabeth, Biogra- 
phy, 160; Criticism, 160- 
16i; Literature on, 161; 
Plays, list, 161; Play dis- 
cussed: "Chains," 162- 
164; Referred to, vii, 156 

Baker, G. P., 263, 269. 

" Banker's Daughter, The," 
Howard, 219 

Barker, Granville, Biogra- 
phy, 90; Criticism, 90-91; 
Literature on, 92; Plays, 
list, 91; Play discussed: 
" Voysey Inheritance, 

The," 93-96; Referred to, 
vi, 48, 64, 73, 116, 156, 171, 

Barrie, Sir James, Biogra- 
phy, 165; Criticism, 165; 
Literature on, 167; Plays, 
list, 165-167; Plays dis- 
cussed: "Pantaloon," 168- 
169, "Twelve-pound Look, 
The," 170-172; Referred 
to, V, 48, 73, 90, 93, 246 

Baudelaire, Charles, 51 



305 



306 



INDEX 



" Beastly Pride," Baker, 160 
" Beau Brummel," Fitch, 

248 
" Becky Sharp," Mitchell, 

289 
" Before Breakfast," Sow- 

erby, 154 
Belasco, David, v, 227, 285- 

286 
" Benefit of the Doubt, 

The," Pinero, 4 
Bennett, Arnold, 207 
Benrimo, Harry, 284 
Benson, F. R., 97 
" Bertrade," Lemaitre, 81 
Besier, Rudolf, v 
" Bienfaiteurs, Les," Brieux, 

135 
"Big Idea, The," Thomas 

and Hamilton, 271 
"Birthright," Murray, 209, 

210-212 
Biornson, Bjornstjerne, 75 
" iBlot in the 'Scutcheon, A," 

Browning, 99, 100 
"Boss, The," Sheldon, 269, 

274, 275 
Boucicault, Dion, 220 
"Bought and Paid For," 

Broadhurst, 255, 288 
" Brand," Ibsen, 257 
Brieux, Eugene, 17, 82, 207 
Broadhurst, George H., 288 
" Broadway Jones," Cohan, 

238 
Brown, Alice, 290 
Browning, Robert, 99 
" Bygones," Pinero, 3 
Byron, H, J., 149 

Campbell, Mrs. Patrick, 90 

" Campden Wonder, The," 
Masefield, 141 

"Candida," Shaw, 66, 71-75, 
78, 81, 138 

Capital and labor as a sub- 
ject for drama, 131-133, 
158-159, 178 



" Captain Brassbound's Con- 
version," Shaw, 74 

" Captain Drew on Leave," 
Davies, 121 

Capus, Alfred, 137 

Carpenter, Edward, 64 

" Case of Rebellious Susan, 
The," Jones, 27, 29 

" Cassilis Engagement, The," 
Hankin, 110-113 

Catastrophe, 12, 28 

"Chains," Baker, 116, 160, 
162-164 

Chambers, C. Haddon, Bi- 
ography, 114; Criticism, 
114; Literature on, 115; 
Plays, list, 114-115; Play 
discussed : " Tyranny of 
Tears, The," 116-120 

"Change," Francis, 44, 45, 
173, 175-178 

Characterization, 20, 215, 
254 

" Chief Contemporary Dra- 
matists," Ed. Dickinson, 
261 

Child-motif, 227 

Clark, Barrett H., 12, 62 

"Clerical Error, A," Jones, 
29 

Climax, 12, 44-46, 176, 211, 
262, 267 

" Climbers, The," Fitch, 253 

"Closet Drama," 99 

Cohan, George M., v, 287 

" College Widow, The," Ade, 
287 

"Combustion," Thomas, 234 

"Comedy of Errors, A," 
Shakespeare, 119 

Commercialization of the 
theater, 95 

" Concert, The." See " Kon- 
zert, Das"" 

Congreve, William, 29 

" Continental Drama of To- 
day, The," Clark, v, 12, 
25, 84 



INDEX 



307 



" Countess Cathleen, The," 
Yeats, 185-187 

" County Chairman, The," 
Ade, 287 

Court Theater, The, Lon- 
don, 64, 90, 107, 154 

Crothers, Rachel M., 290- 
291 

"Crows, The," Becque, 121 

Croydon Repertory Theater, 
160 

" Crusaders, The," Jones, 
356 

Curel, Francois de, 126 

"Curtains," 75, 111, 137-138 

"Cyrano de Bergerac," Ro- 
stand, 81 

" Daisy's Escape," Pinero, 
3 

"Damaged Goods," Brieux, 
17, 82 

"Dandy Dick," Pinero, 4 

D'Annunzio, Gabriele, 26 

Dante, 101 

Dargan, Olive Tilford, 284 

" Darling of the Gods, The," 
Belasco, 286 

Davies, Hubert Henry, Bi- 
ography, 121 ; Criticism, 
121-122; Literature on, 
123; Plays, list, 122; Play 
discussed : "Mollusc, The," 
124-127; Referred to, vl, 
vii, 116 

De Bar, Ben, 233 

"Deirdre," Yeats, 186 

De Mille, W. C, 288 

"Denouement," 12, 145, ISO, 
204-205 

Development, 12, 75, 262 

" Devil's Disciple, The," 
Shaw, 74 

Dialogue, 60-61, 100, 136, 
151-153, 210, 238-239, 278- 
280 

Division of acts and scenes, 
151, 186, 212 



" Doctor's Dilemma, The," 

Shaw, 78, 81, 83 
"Doll's House, A," Ibsen, 

145, 150, 226, 255 
" Dolly Reforming Herself," 

Jones, 27, 30, 256 
"Don Juan in Hell," Shaw, 

79 
Donnay, Maurice, 26 
"Doormats," Davies, 121 
Douglas, Lord Alfred, 51 
" Drama, Its Law and Tech- 
nique, The," Woodbridge, 

12 
" Dramatic Opinions and 

Essays," Shaw, quoted, 41- 

42 
" Dramatic Portraits," Howe, 

16; quoted, 73 
Dramatic talent, Pinero 

quoted on, 17 
Drawing-room play, 156 
"Dream of Love, A," Da- 
vies, 121 
"Drifting Apart," Heme, 

228 
Drinkwater, John, quoted on 

Hankin, 107-108 
"Du Barry," Belasco, 286 
"Duchess of Padua, The," 

Wilde, 47, 48 
Duke of York's Theater, 

London, 90 
Dumas fils, Alexandre, 14, 
27 

"Easiest Way, The," Wal- 
ter, 24, 255, 276, 278- 
280 

Eaton, W. P., 287 

" Editha's Burglar," Tho- 
mas, 233, 234 

Edwards, T. R., vii 

"Eldest Son, The," Gals- 
worthy, 149 

" Elizabethan Stage Society," 
90 

"Embers," Middleton, 282 



308 



INDEX 



" Empedocles," Arnold, 99 
English Drama, 3-178 
Ervine, St. John G., Biog- 
raphy, 213; Criticism, 213; 
Literature, 214; Plays, 
list, 214; Play discussed: 
" Mixed Marriage," 215- 
216; Referred to, vi 
" Evangile du sang, L'," 

Loyson, 82 
Exposition, 12, 15, 19, 75, 
136 

Fabian Society, The, 64 
Faguet, Emile, quoted, 112 
" Faith Healer, The," 

Moody, 258 
Family drama, 156 
" Fanny's First Play," 

Shaw, 78, 85 
"Fantine," Howard, 219 
Farce, 60 
Fate-motif, 52 
"Father and the Boys," 

Ade, 287 
" Feathertop," Hawthorne, 

266 
"Fenris the Wolf," Mac- 

kaye, 285 
" Fine Feathers," Walter, 

276 
"First Lead," 72 
Fiske, Mrs., 269, 289 
Fitch, Clyde, Biography, 

248; Criticism, 248-249; 

Literature on, 251-252; 

Plays, list, 249-250; Play 

discussed: "Truth, The," 

253-257; Referred to, 237, 

263 
Flaubert, Gustave, 51 
" Florentine Tragedy, A," 

Wilde, 48 
"Food," De Mille, 288 
Foreshortening of time, 144- 

145 
" Foundations of a National 

Drama," Jones, 42 



" Fourberies de Scapin, 
Les," Molifere, 119 

" Four Irish Plays," Ervine, 
216 

" Fourth Estate, The," Pat- 
terson, 289 

" Francesca da Rimini," 
D'Annunzio, 105 

Francis, John Oswald, Biog- 
raphy, 173; Criticism, 
173; Literature on, 174; 
Plays, list, 174; Play dis- 
cussed: "Change," 175- 
178; Referred to, vii, 
44 

" Free Woman, The," Don- 
nay, 254 

Freytag, Gustav. See 
" Technique of the 
Drama, The" 

" Fritzchen," Sudermann, 86, 
172 

"Future of the Theater, 
The," Palmer, 138 

Galsworthy, John, Biogra- 
phy, 128; Criticism, 128- 
129; Literature on, 130; 
Plays, list, 129; Plays dis- 
cussed: "Strife," 131-134; 
"Pigeon, The," 135-139; 
Referred to, vi, 15, 74, 82, 
90, 93, 156, 159, 165 

" Gamblers, The," Klein, 290 

" Gaol Gate, The," Gregory, 
199 

"Garland for Sylvia, A," 
Mackaye, 284 

Gates, Eleanor, 290 

" Gay Lord Quex, The," Pi- 
nero, 4, 162 

George, Henry, 63; quoted 
on Heme, 231 

" Get-Rich-Quick Walllng- 
ford," Cohan, 238 

" Getting Married," Shaw, 
72, 81-85, 124, 172 

Giacosa, Giuseppe, 10 



INDEX 



309 



Gilbert, Sir William S., 16 

Gillette, William, Biogra- 
phy, 243; Criticism, 243; 
Literature on, 244; Plays, 
list, 243-244; Play dis- 
cussed : " Held by the En- 
emy," 245-24T; Referred 
to, 263 

"Girl of the Golden West, 
The," Belasco, 286 

"Ghosts," Ibsen, 16, 272 

" Girl With the Green Eyes, 
The," Fitch, 253 

" Governor's Lady, The," 
Belasco, 286 

Grand Opera House, New 
York, 228 

" Great Divide, The," 
Moody, 258, 260-262 

Greet, Ben, 90 

Gregory, Lady Augusta, Bi- 
ography, 198; Criticism, 
198-199; Literature on, 
201; Plays, list, 199-200; 
Plays discussed : " Hya- 
cinth Halvey," 202-205 ; 
" Rising of the Moon, 
The," 206-207; Referred 
to, vi, 181, 182, 213 

Grein, J. T., vii, 16, 64 

" Hail and Farewell," 
Moore, 192 

Hale, E. E., Jr., 97 

Hamilton, Clayton, vii, 12, 
24 

"Hamlet," Shakespeare, 37, 
126, 131, 144, 193, 203, 
204 

Hankin, St. John, Biogra- 
phy, 107; Criticism, 107- 
108; Literature on, 108- 
109; Plays, list, 108; Play 
discussed : " Cassilis En- 
gagement, The," 110-113; 
Referred to, 90 

Happy endings, 113, 255, 
262 



" Harlequinade, The," Bar- 
ker, 91 
Harte, Bret, 87 
"Havoc, The," H. S. Shel- 
don, 95 
Hazelton, George C, Jr., 284 
" Heart of Maryland, The," 

Belasco, 286 
"Hearts of Oak," Heme, 

228 
"Hedda Gabler," Ibsen, 19, 

27 
" Held by the Enemy," Gil- 
lette, 243, 243-247 
" Henrietta, The," How- 
ard, 219, 227 
Herman, Henry, 29, 36 
Heme, James A., Biogra- 
phy, 228; Criticism, 228- 
229; Literature on, 229- 
230; Plays, list, 229; Play 
discussed: "Shore Acres," 
231-232 
Hero, 39 

" Herod," Phillips, 101 
Heroine, 39 
Hervieu, Paul, 29, 40, 82, 

135, 207 
"High Road, The," Shel- 
don, 269, 271, 274-275 
" Hindle Wakes," Hough- 
ton, 147, 149-153, 154 
Horniman, Miss A. E. F., 

160 
Houghton, Stanley, Biogra- 
phy, 147; Criticism, 147; 
Literature on, 148; Plays, 
list, 147-148; Play dis- 
cussed: "Hindle Wakes," 
149-153; Referred to, 
156 
Howard, Bronson, Biogra- 
phy, 219; Criticism, 219- 
220; Literature on, 221- 
222; Plays, list, 220-221; 
Play discussed : " Young 
Mrs. Winthrop," 223-227 
Howe, P. P., quoted on Pi- 



SIO 



INDEX 



nero, 16; quoted on Shaw, 

74 
" Hyacinth Halvey," Greg- 
ory, 202-205, 207 

Ibsen, Henrik, 16, 64, 72, 

74, 82, 126, 150, 151, 156, 

226, 272 
" Ideal Husband, An," 

Wilde, 47 
" Image, The," Gregory, 199 
" Importance of Being 

Earnest, The," Wilde, 47, 

48, 58, 59-62 
" Independent Means," 

Houghton, 147 
Independent Theater, The, 

16, 64 
Ingenue, 72 
"In Memoriam: Bronson 

Howard," Matthews, 226 
"Inn of Tranquillity, The," 

Galsworthy, 131 
" Intruder, The," Maeter- 
linck, 164, 186 
Irish Drama, 181-216 
" Irish Literary Theatre, 

The," 181, 188 
"Iris," Pinero, 4, 19-23, 26, 

37, 40, 196, 278 
Irving, Sir Henry, 3 

" Jackdaw, The," Gregory, 
203, 204, 207 

"Jane Clegg," Ervine, 213 

" Jeanne d'Arc," Mackaye, 
263 

"John Bull's Other Island," 
Shaw, 80 

" John Gabriel Borkman," 
Ibsen, 10 

Jones, Henry Arthur, Biog- 
raphy, 29; Criticism, 29- 
30; Literature on, 34-35; 
Plays, list, 30-34; Plays 
discussed: "Silver King, 
The," 36-39, "Michael and 
His Lost Angel," 40-43, 



"Liars, The," 44-46; Re- 
ferred to, vi, 16, 27, 48, 
65, 66, 78, 116, 117, 150, 
156, 207 

" Julius Caesar," Shake- 
speare, 203 

" Justice," Galsworthy, 15, 
27, 82 

" Karen Bornemann," Berg- 

strom, 272 
" Kate," Howard, 220 
" Kathleen ni Houlihan," 

Yeats, 187 
Kennedy, Charles Rann, v 
" King Lear," Shakespeare, 

131, 260 
Kingsway Theater, London, 

90 
Klein, Charles, 288, 289-290 
Knoblauch, Edward, 207 
" Konzert, Das," Bahr, 256 
Krans, H. S., quoted on 

Yeats, 181 

"Labyrinth, The," Hervieu, 

247 
" Lady Bountiful," Pinero, 4 
" Lady Windermere's Fan," 

Wilde, 47, 55-58, 62, 119, 

120 
Legouve, Ernest, 246 
Lemattre, Jules, 125 
" Leonarda," Bjornson, 75 
" Liars, The," Jones, 27, 29, 

44-46, 127, 205, 239, 254, 

267 
Lie, the, as dramatic mate- 
rial, 254 
"Lie, The," Jones, 254 
"Liebelei," Schnitzler, 242 
" Life of Man, The," An- 

dreyeff, 164 
" Lion and the Mouse, The," 

Klein, 289 
Literature and drama, 43, 

261 
"Literature and the Mod- 



INDEX 



311 



em Drama," Jones, quot- 
ed, 42 
Little Theater, London, 1 Si- 
Little Theater, New York, 

154 
Logic, dramatic, 22, 151-153 
" Loi de I'homme, La," Her- 

vieu, 82 
London, Jack, 87 
" Lovers." See " Amants " 
Loyson, Paul Hyacinthe, 82 
" £200 a Year," Pinero, 3 

"Macbeth," Shakespeare, 53; 
quoted, 99-100, 126, 131, 
144, 156 

Mackaye, Percy, Biogra- 
phy, 263; Criticism, 263; 
Literature on, 264-265 ; 
Plays, list, 264; Play dis- 
cussed: "Scarecrow, The," 
266-268; Referred to, 284- 
285 

Mackaye, Steele, 263 

" Madame Butterfly," Be- 
lasco, 286 

"Madman or Saint," Eche- 
garay, 216 

" Madras House, The," Bar- 
ker, 73, 90, 91 

Maeterlinck, Maurice, 51, 
185, 232 

" Magda," Sudermann, 75, 
85, 120, 158, 175 

" Maggie Pepper," Klein, 
290 

" Magistrate, The," Pi- 
nero, 4 

" Magnanimous Lover, The," 
Ervine, 149, 213 

" Man and Superman," 
Shaw, 66, 71, 72, 76-80, 81, 
95 127 

"Man of the Hour, The," 
Broadhurst, 288 

Mansfield, Richard, 248 

"Man's World, A," Croth- 
ers, 290 



" Margaret Fleming," Heme, 

228 
"Marlowe," Peabody, 283 
Martyn, Edward, 181 
Masefield, John, Biography, 

140; Criticism, 140-141; 

Literature on, 141-142; 

Plays, list, 141; Play dis- 
cussed: "Tragedy of Nan, 

The," 143-146 
"Mater," Mackaye, 263 
Matthews, Brander, 12; 

quoted on mots, 118-119; 

quoted on Howard, 219- 

220, 226; quoted, 246 
Maugham, W. Somerset, vi, 

116 
" Maurice Harte," Murray, 

209-210 
Mayo, Margaret, 290 
" May Blossom," Belasco, 

285 
Melodrama, 36 - 39, 239- 

240 
" Michael and His Lost 

Angel," Jones, 29, 30, 40- 

43, 78 
" Mid-Channel," Pinero, 4, 

15, 20, 24-28, 127 
" Middleman, The," Jones, 

30 
Middleton, George, vii, 281- 

283 
" Milestones," Bennett and 

Knoblauch, 154, 175, 271, 

272 
" Milieu," 86, 94, 196 
" ' Mind - the - Paint ' Girl, 

The," Pinero, 4 
" Minute Men, The," Heme, 

228 
" Misalliance," Shaw, 72, 

81, 85 
Mitchell, Langdon, 289 
" Mixed Marriage," Ervine, 

212, 215-216 
Mobs, 176 
Moli^re, 119, 199 



312 



INDEX 



"Mollusc, The," Davies, 95, 
121, 124-127, 256 

"Money-Spinner, The," Pi- 
nero, 3 

Moody, William Vaughn, 
Biography, 258; Criticism, 
258; Literature on, 259; 
Plays, list, 258; Play dis- 
cussed : " Great Divide, 
The," 260-262 

Moore, George, vi, 181; 
quoted on Synge, 191, 196 

Morris, William, 64 

"Mortal Gods, The," Dar- 
gan, 284 

Moses, Montrose J., vii, 
175; quoted on Heme, 
231; quoted on Thomas, 
237; quoted on Gillette, 
246 

Motivation, 56-58, 126-127, 
144-145 

" Mots " (" caractere," " sit- 
uation," "d'esprit"), 118- 
119, 254 

" Mrs. Dane's Defence," 
Jones, 27, 45 

" Mrs. Gorringe's Necklace," 
Davies, 121 

" Mrs. Harrison," Mase- 
field, 141 

" Mrs. Warren's Profes- 
sion," Shaw, 64-65, 73, 78 

Murray, T. C, Biography, 
208; Criticism, 208-209; 
Literature on, 209; Plays, 
list, 209; Play discussed: 
"Birthright," 210-212; Re- 
ferred to, vii, 213 

" Myself, Bettina," Crothers, 
290 

" Nathan Hale," Fitch, 245 
" New Marriage, The," 

Mitchell, 289 
New Theater, New York, 

283 
New Woman, The, 17 



"New York Idea, The," 

Mitchell, 289 
" Nigger, The," Sheldon, 

269, 274 
" Nowadays," Middleton, 

282, 283 
Number of characters in 

plays, 125 

" CEdipus," Sophocles, 143, 

193 203 
" On Baile's Strand," Yeats, 

198 
One-act play, 52, 168-172, 

192, 193; Middleton on, 

282, 283 
"Only 'Round the Cor- 
ner," Jones, 29 
" On Trial," Reizenstein, 

271, 272, 273 
" Orangeman, The," Ervine, 

213 
" Oscar Wilde," Arthur 

Ransome, 47; quoted, 51- 

52 
"Othello," Shakespeare, 203 

"Paid in Full," Walter, 

276 
Palmer, John, quoted on 

Galsworthy, 138 
" Pantaloon," Barrie, 168- 

169 
" Paolo and Francesca," 

Phillips, 51, 99-106, 186, 

197 
" Pardon, The," Lemaitre, 

95 125 
"Pathetic Fallacy," The, in 

drama, 156-158 
" Patrie ! " Sardou, 245 
Patterson, Joseph Medill, 

289 
Peabody, Josephine Preston 

(Mrs. Marks), 283-284 
" Pell6as and Mdlisande," 

Maeterlinck, 186 



INDEX 



S13 



"Peter Pan," Barrie, 165, 
168 

" Peter Stuyvesant," How- 
ard and Matthews, 226 

" Philanderer, The," Shaw, 
64 

" Philip the King," Mase- 
field, 141 

Phillips, Stephen, Biogra- 
phy, 97; Criticism, 97; 
Literature on, 98; Plays, 
list, 97-98; Play dis- 
cussed: "Paolo and Fran- 
cesca," 99-106; Referred 
to, vii, 43, 51 

"Pigeon, The," Galsworthy, 
135-139 

Pinero, Sir Arthur, Biog- 
raphy, 3-4; Criticism, 4- 
5; Literature on, 8-9; 
Plays discussed : '* Sweet 
Lavender," 10-13, " Second 
Mrs. Tanqueray, The," 14- 
18, "Iris," 19-23; "Mid- 
Channel," 24-28; Referred 
to, vi, 30, 37, 40, 65, 66, 77, 
78, 91, 114, 116, 117, 122, 
124, 149, 156, 162, 237, 
278 

" Piper, The," Peabody, 
283-284 

" Play Actors, The," 160 

" Playboy of the Western 
World, The," Synge, 141, 
191, 194-197 

" Playmaking," Archer, 12, 
162-163, 260 

Play of ideas, 82 

" Plays Pleasant and Un- 
pleasant," Shaw, 65 ; 
quoted on Ibsen, 72-73 

Poetic drama, 51, 99-101 

"Poetry Review, The," 97 

"Poliche," Bataille, 112 

Porto-Riche, Georges de, 
117-118 

" Possession," Middleton, 
282-283 



Preparation, 59-60, 101 

" Preserving Mr. Panmure," 

Pinero, 4 
" Price of Thomas Scott, 

The," Baker, 160 
"Professor, The," Gillette, 

243 
" Profligate, The," Pinero, 4, 

13 
" Prunella," Barker and 

Housman, 91 
" Pygmalion," Shaw, 78, 85 

" Queen Mary," Tennyson, 

99 
Queensberry, Marquess of 

47 

" Raisonneur," 26 

Ransome, Arthur, 47 

" Rebellion," Patterson, 289 

Repertory Theater, Charles 
Frohman's, 160 

" Return of Peter Grimm, 
The," Belasco, 227, 285 

Restoration Dramatists, 30 

"Return of the Prodigal, 
The," Hankin, 110, 113 

" Rev. Griffith Davenport, 
The," Heme, 228 

" Revolutionist's Handbook, 
The" (In "Man and Su- 
perman "), 76 

" Richard III.," Shake- 
speare, 145 

" Riders to the Sea," Synge, 
156, 191-193 

Rinehart, Mary Roberts, 
290 

"Rising of the Moon, The," 
Gregory, 206-207 

Robertson, T. W., 16, 149, 
220 

Robinson, Lennox, 213 

" Romance," Sheldon, 78, 
269, 271-275 

" Romeo and Juliet," Shake- 
speare, 203 



314 



INDEX 



" Rosmersholm," Ibsen, 82, 

272 
Ross, Robert, quoted in 

Ransome's " Oscar Wilde," 

51-59 
" Rutherford and Son," 

Sowerby, 154-159, 175, 178 

" Sabine Woman, A." See 
"Great Divide, The" 

"Sag Harbor," Heme, 228 

" Saints and Sinners," Jones, 
29 

" Saint Louis," Mackaye, 
284 

"Salom6," Wilde, 48, 51-54, 
58 

" Sanctuary," Mackaye, 284 

" Sapho and Phnon," Mac- 
kaye, 263, 285 

"Saratoga," Howard, 219 

Sarcey, Francisque, 163 

" Sardoodledom," 71 

Sardou, Victorien, 43 

" Saturday Review, The," 
16, 64 

Savoy Theater, 90 

" Scarecrow, The," Mac- 
kaye, 263, 266-268 

"Schoolmistress, The," Pi- 
nero, 4 

Scott, Clement, 163 

" Seagull, The," Tchekoff, 
82 

" Second Mrs. Tanqueray, 
The," Pinero, 4, 13, 14-1*8, 
19, 20, 85, 120, 124, 149, 
196 

" Secret Service," Gillette, 
243, 245 

" Servant in the House, 
The," Kennedy, 124 

" Seven Keys to Baldpate," 
Cohan, 271 

"Seven Short Plays," Greg- 
ory, 199, 202, 206 

" Shadowy Waters, The," 
Yeats, 198 



Shakespeare, 51, 100, 125- 
126, 191 

Shaw, Bernard, Biography, 
63-64; Criticism, 65-66; 
Literature on, 69-70; 
Plays, list, 66-68; Plays 
discussed : " Candida," 71- 
75, " Man and Superman," 
76-80; "Getting Married," 
81-85, " Shewing-up of 
Blanco Posnet, The," 86- 
89; Referred to, vi, 16, 40, 
42, 48, 90, 93, 117, 170, 
171, 207, 246 

Sheldon, Edward, Biogra- 
phy, 269; Criticism, 269; 
Literature on, 270; Plays, 
list, 269-270; Play dis- 
cussed : " Romance," 271- 
275; Referred to, 78 

" Shenandoah," Howard, 219, 
227 

Sheridan, 29, 125 

" Sherlock Holmes," Gil- 
lette, 243 

" Shewing-up of Blanco Pos- 
net, The," Shaw, 78, 85, 
86-89, 172 

" Shore Acres," Heme, 228, 
231-232 

"Silver Box, The," Gals- 
worthy, 128, 138, 139 

" Silver King, The," Jones 
and Herman, 29, 30, 36-39, 
40 

Sims, G. R., 77 

Soliloquy, 75, 102-103, 223- 
225 

" Sovereign Love," Murray, 
208 

Sowerby, Githa (Mrs. John 
Kendall), Biography, 154; 
Criticism, 154-155; Liter- 
ature on, 155; Plays, list, 
155; Play discussed: 
" Rutherford and Son," 
156-159; Referred to, vii, 
160 



INDEX 

News," 



315 



" Spreading the 
Gregory, 198, 203 

"Squire, The," Pinero, 3 

St. Charles Theater, New 
Orleans, 233 

St. James's Theater, Lon- 
don, 90 

Stage-directions, 72-74, 94, 
168-169, 170-172, 187, 207 

Stage Society, London, 64, 
90, 107 

"Stevenson, R. L., The 
Dramatist," Pinero, quot- 
ed, 17 

Strauss, Richard, 53 

" Strife," Galsworthy, 52, 
131-134, 135, 137, 159, 
178 

" Strongheart," De Mille, 
288 

Struggle in the drama, 157, 
163, 216 

" Stubbornness of Gerald- 
ine. The," Fitch, 253 

"Study of the Drama, A," 
Matthews, 12; quoted, 
118-119, 246 

"Such is Life," Wedekind, 
81 

Sudermann, Hermann, 75, 
86 

Sutro, Alfred, v 

" Sweet Lavender," Pinero, 
4, 10-13, 14, 18, 20, 22, 27, 
149, 205 

Swinburne, 99 

Synge, John Millington, Bi- 
ography, 188; Criticism, 
188-199 ; Literature on, 
189-190; Plays, list, 189; 
Plays discussed : " Riders 
to the Sea," 191-193, 
" Playboy of the Western 
World, The," 194-197; 
Referred to, 199, 207, 213 

" Technique of the Drama, 
The," Baker, 12 



" Technique of the Drama," 
Freytag, 12 

" Technique of the Drama," 
Price, 12 

Tennyson, Alfred, 99 

"Theater of Ideas, The," 
Jones, 207 

Theatrical talent, Pinero 
quoted on, 17 

Themes of the plays, 117, 
118 

"Theory of the Theater, 
The," Hamilton, 12 

Thesis, 88 

Thesis plays, 150 - 151, 
215 

" Third Degree, The," Klein, 
290 

Thomas, Augustus, Biogra- 
phy, 233-234 ; Criticism, 
234; Literature on, 235- 
236; Plays, list, 234-235; 
Play discussed: "Witch- 
ing Hour, The," 237-242; 
Referred to, 16, 226, 246, 
247, 263 

"Three Daughters of M. 
Dupont, The," Brieux, 
247 

"Thousand Years Ago, A," 
Mackaye, 263 

" Thunderbolt, The," Pi- 
nero, 4, 15, 16, 24, 91, 149, 
196 

"Tinker's Wedding, The," 
Synge, 194 

"Too Much Johnson," Gil- 
lette 243 

" Tradition," Middleton, 282, 
283 

Tragedy, Hervieu quoted 
on, 25; diiference between 
melodrama, and, 37-39, 
112-113, 140; Masefield 
quoted on, 143, 192, 193; 
compared with comedy, 
203-204 

"Tragedy of Nan, The," 



316 



INDEX 



Masefield, 140, 141, 143- 

146 
" Tragedy of Pompey the 

Great, The," Masefield, 

141 
" Traveling Man, The," 

Gregory, 199 
"Truth, The," Fitch, 253- 

257 
"Tyranny of Tears, The," 

Chambers, 116-120 
"Twelve-pound Look, The," 

Barrie, 73, 95, 168-169, 

170-172 

"Ulysses," Phillips, 101 

Unity, 87 

Unities, Greek, 81, 84, 124 

Vaudeville Theater, London, 

154 
Vedrenne, J. E., 90 
"Vera, or The Nihilists," 

Wilde, 47, 48 
Villain, 39, 72 
" Voysey Inheritance, The," 

Barker, 16, 73, 90, 93-96, 

154, 158 

Walden, Lord Howard de, 
173 

Waller, Lewis, 90 

Walter, Eugene, Biography, 
276; Criticism, 276; Liter- 
ature on, 277; Plays, list, 
277 ; Play discussed : 
" Easiest Way, The," 278- 
280; Referred to, v. 23 

War plays, 245 

" Warrens of Virginia, 
The," De Mille, 288 

"Waste," Barker, 90, 95 

Webb, Sidney, 63 

" Well of the Saints," Synge, 
198 

Well-made play, The, 71, 
75, 81, 159, 163 



Welsh National Drama 
Company, 173, 175 

" What Every Woman 
Knows," Barrie, 165 

What is a play? 84, 247 

"Wheel o' Fortune, The," 
Murray, 208-209 

" What Happened to 
Jones," Broadhurst, 288 

"Why Smith Left Home,'' 
Broadhurst, 288 

" Widowers' Houses," Shaw, 
64, 65, 75, 77, 78, 81 

"Wild Duck, The," Ibsen. 
82 

Wilde, Oscar, Biography, 
47-48; Criticism, 48; Lit- 
erature on, 50; Plays, list, 
49; Plays discussed: "Sa- 
lome," 51-54, " Lady Win- 
dermere's Fan," 55-58, 
" Importance of Being 
Earnest, The," 59-62; Re- 
ferred to, 10, 30, 66, 
110 

"Will, The," Barrie, 169 

" Wings, The," Peabody, 
283 

" Witching Hour, The," 
Thomas, 234, 237-242, 245, 
246, 262 

"Within the Law," Veiller, 
255 

"Wolf of Gubbio, The," 
Peabody, 283 

"Woman of No Impor- 
tance, A," Wilde, 47, 61, 
120 

"Woman, The," De Mille, 
146, 288 

Woodbridge, Elizabeth. See 
" Drama, Its Law and 
Technique, The" 

" Workhouse Ward, The,' 
Gregory, 203 

Wyndham, Mr. and Mrs., 3 

Yeats, John B., 181 



INDEX 



317 



Yeats, William Butler, Bi- 
ography, 181 ; Criticism, 
181-182; Literature on, 
183-184; Plays, list, 182; 
Play discussed : " Countess 
Cathleen, The," 185-187; 
Referred to, vi, 188, 189, 
191, 213 

"Yellow Jacket, The," Ben- 
rimo and Hazelton, 17, 284 



"You Never Can Tell," 

Shaw, 71, 78 
" Younger Generation, The," 

Houghton, 147, 154, 175 
" Young Mrs. Winthrop," 

Howard, 219, 223-227, 239, 

262 

Zangwill, Israel, v 
"Zaza," Belasco, 286 



SHORT PLAYS 

By MARY MacMILLAN 



To fill a long-felt want. All have been successfully pre- 
sented. Suitable for Women's Clubs, Girls' Schools, etc. 
While elaborate enough for big presentation, they may be 
given very simply. 

This volume contains ten Plays: 

The Shadowed Star has six women, one boy; may all be taken 
by women. Time, present. Scene, in a tenement Christmas 
Eve. One act, 45 minutes. 

The Ring. Costume play. Time, days of Shakespeare. Three 
women, seven men. Scene, interior. One act, 45 minutes. 

The Rose. One woman, two men. Time, Elizabethan. Scene, 
castle interior. One act, 30 minutes. Song introduced. 

Luck. Four short acts. Time, present. Interior scene. 
Seven women, six men. Comedy. 

Entre' Acte. Costume play. Time, present. Scene, interior. 
Two women, one man. Contains a song. One act. 

A Woman's a Woman for A' That. Time, present. Interior 
scene. One act, 45 minutes. Three women, two men. Comedy. 

A Fan and Two Candlesticks. Costume play. Colonial times. 
Scene, interior. Two men, one woman One act, 20 to 30 
minutes. Written in rhymed couplets. 

A Modern Masque. Time, present. Scene, outdoors. Fan- 
tastic, written in prose and verse. Costume play in one act, 
30 minutes or more. Four women, three men. 

The Futurists. One-act farce, of the first woman's club of the 
early eighties. Interior. Forty five minutes Eight women. 

The Gate of Wishes. One-act fantasy. Outdoors. Half hour. 
One girl, one man. Singing voices of fairies. 

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MORE SHORT PLAYS 

By MARY MacMILLAN 

Plays that act well may read well. Miss MacMillan's 
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to dramatic performance. 

This volume contains eight Plays: 

His Second Girl. One-act comedy, just before the Civil War. 
Interior, 45 minutes. Three women, three men. 

At the Church Door. Fantastic farce, one act, 20 to 30 minutes. 
Interior. Present. Two women, two men. 

Honey. Four short acts. Present, in the southern mountains. 
Same interior cabin scene throughout. Three women, one 
man, two girls. 

The Dress Rehearsal of Hamlet. One-act costume farce. 
Present. Interior. Forty-five minutes. Ten women taking 
men's parts. 

The Pioneers. Five very short acts. 1791 in Middle-West. 
Interior. Four men, five women, five children, five Indians. 

In Mendelesia, Part I. Costume play, Middle Ages. Interior. 
Thirty minutes or more. Four women, one man-servant. 

In Mendelesia, Part II. Modern realism of same plot. One 
act. Present. Interior. Thirty minutes. Four women, one 
maid-servant. 

The Dryad. Fantasy in free verse, one act. Thirty minutes. 
Outdoors. Two women, one man. Present. 

These plays, as well as SHORT PLAYS, have been pre- 
sented by clubs and schools in Boston, New York, Buffalo, 
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A Notable Achievement 

European Theories of the Drama 

An Anthology of Dramatic Theory and Criticism from 
Aristotle to the Present Day, In a Series of 
Selected Texts, With Commentaries, 
Biographies and Bibliographies 

By BARRETT H. CLARK 

author of 
"Contemporary French Dramatists," "The Conti- 
nental Drama of Today," "British and 
American Drama of Today," etc., etc. 

A book of paramount importance. This monumental anthology 
brings together for the first time the epoch-making theories and criti- 
cisms of the drama which have affected our civilization from the be- 
ginnings in Greece down to the present day. Beginning with Aristotle, 
each utterance on the subject has been chosen with reference to its 
importance, and its effect on subsequent dramatic writing. The texts 
alone would be of great interest and value, but the author, Barrett 
H. Clark, has so connected each period by means of inter-chapters 
that his comments taken as a whole constitute a veritable history of 
dramatic criticism, in which each text bears out his statements. 

Nowhere else is so important a body of doctrine on the subject of 
the drama to be obtained. It cannot fail to appeal to anyone who is 
interested in the theater, and will be indispensable to students. 

The introduction to each section of the book is followed by an 
exhaustive bibliography; each writer whose work is represented is made 
the subject of a brief biography, and the entire volume is rendered 
doubly valuable by the index, which is worked out in great detail. 

Prof. Brander Matthevs, of Columbia University, says: "Mr. 
Clark deserves high praise for the careful thoroughness with which 
he has performed the task he set for himself. He has done well what 
was well worth doing. In these five hundred pages he has extracted 
the essence of several five-foot shelves. His anthology will be in- 
valuable to all students of the principles of playmaking; and it ought 
to be welcomed by all those whose curiosity has been aroused by the 
frequent references of our latter-day theorists of the theater to their 
predecessors Aristotle and Horace, Castelvetro and Scaliger, Sidney 
and Jonson, d'Aubignac and Boileau, Lessing and Schlegel, Goethe 
and Coleridge." 

Wm. Lyon Phelps, of Yale University, writes: "Mr. Clark's book, 
'European Theories of the Drama,' is an exceedingly valuable work 
and ought to be widely useful." 

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